Front.     ' '  The  Epistles  of  St.  J  ohn. 


THE    EPISTLES    OF    ST.    JOHN 


THE 


EPISTLES  OF  ST.  JOHN 


BY  CHARLES  GORE,  D.D. 


V 

b£P  ?r»  1920 


HON.  D.r>.    EDIN.    AND  DURHAM,  HON.  D.C.L.  OXFORD,  HON.   LL.D.   CAMBRIDGE 

AND  BIRMINGHAM,   HON.   FELLOW  OP  TRINITY  COLLEGE,   OXFORD, 

LATE  BISHOP  OF  OXFORD 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1920 


PEEFACE 

An  exposition  of  St.  John's  Epistles  by  the 
present  writer  was  announced,  as  one  of  a  series 
of  such  expositions,  in  1900.  This  was  to  have 
been  a  revision  of  lectures  actually  delivered  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  but  it  was  never  accom- 
plished. And  now  that  I  am  taking  advantage 
of  some  recovered  leisure  to  publish  the  intended 
exposition,  I  have  not  gone  back  upon  the 
reports  of  former  lectures.  The  present  exposi- 
tion is  entirely  new. 

Both  in  the  introduction  and  in  the  exposition 
itself  I  have  had  in  view  especially  the  ordinary 
man  and  woman  who  lack  the  equipment  and 
knowledge  of  a  scholar,  and  I  have  tried  to 
take  no  knowledge  for  granted  that  an  ordinary 
education  does  not  supply. 

Believing,  as  I  do,  that  nothing  is  more  im- 
portant than  to  get  people  in  our  day,  whatever 
their  state  of  belief,  to  study  the  New  Testament 
books  for  themselves,  I  have  had  it  for  my  own 


X  Preface 

object  to  make  these  epistles  intelligible  and 
interesting  to  them.  After  the  necessary  intro- 
duction on  the  authorship  and  character  of  the 
documents,  I  have  used  the  following  method. 
Each  section  of  the  Epistle  is  preceded  by  an 
"  explanatory  analysis."  This  is  intended  to 
include  all  the  explanatory  matter  necessary 
for  the  general  understanding  of  the  passage, 
though  that  may  have  to  be  found  in  the  Old 
Testament  or  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  or  elsewhere. 
But  it  concludes  in  each  case  with  what  can 
properly  be  called  an  analysis  of  the  particular 
passage  immediately  to  be  studied.  It  is  fol- 
lowed by  the  text  of  the  passage  from  the 
Revised  Version ;  and  this  again  by  notes  on 
particular  points  in  the  passage. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  Epistle  has  a  very 
direct  bearing  on  present-day  controversies — 
especially  on  the  tendencies  commonly  called 
"  Modernist ''  and  on  the  social  application  of 
Christianity  and  the  function  of  the  Church  in 
society.  I  have  from  time  to  time  indicated 
such  applications,  but  I  have  resisted  the  temp- 
tation to  write  at  any  length  upon  them,  because 
I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  I  had  better 
confine  myself  pretty  strictly  to  the  function  of 


Preface  xi 

exposition  properly  so-called.  But  I  may  say 
that  I  believe  nothing  can  be  more  important 
for  oiu'  modern  world  than  that  we  should 
believe  St.  John's  principles,  theological  and 
ethical,  with  all  our  hearts,  and  set  ourselves 
to  apply  them  with  all  our  will. 

Chakles  Gore. 

Ash  Wediiesday,  1920. 

P.S. — Since  Dr.  Sanday's  declaration  in 
Divme  Overruling  (Clarke,  1920),  his  name 
should  no  longer  be  included  in  the  list  given 
below,  p.  17. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction    .... 

. 

PAGE 
1 

The  First  Epistle 

i.     1-  4      .     The  word  of  life 

. 

.       52 

i.     5 — ii.  6.     God  is  light 

. 

64 

ii.     7-17      .     The  law  of  love  . 

. 

.       91 

ii.   18-29      .     The  antichrists    . 

. 

.      107 

iii.      1-12     .     The    children    of 

God 

and 

the  children  of  the  devil     133 

iii.  13-24     .     The  Church  and  the  world- 
Love  and  hate       .  .152 

iv.     1-  6     .     The  testing  of  spirits  .  .164 

iv.     7-21     .     God  is  love  .  .  .     173 

V.     1-12     .     The  divine  witness  to  Jesus 

as  the  Christ  .  .190 

V.  13-17     .     Fellowship  in  the  eternal  life 

and  prayer  for  others     .     201 
V.  18-21     .     The  three  solemn  final  affir- 
mations .  .         .213 
The  Second  Epistle          .         .         .         .221 
The  Third  Epistle   .....     231 


THE  EPISTLES  OF  ST.  JOHN 

INTRODUCTION 

§1 

There  is  a  striking  letter  written  by  Benjamin 
Jowett,  the  Master  of  Balliol,  to  Arthur  Stanley, 
Dean  of  Westminster,  when  the  latter  was  in 
his  sixty-fifth  year,  exhorting  him  to  devote 
the  remainder  of  his  life  to  the  production  of  a 
serious  theological  work.  The  last  ten  years 
of  a  man's  life  are,  he  insists,  the  most  important. 
He  has  had  his  full  measure  of  experience.  He 
has  had  time  to  reflect  upon  it.  All  the  fruit 
of  his  knowledge,  his  experience,  and  his  reflec- 
tion should  be  now  mature.  He  should  sternly 
refuse  to  allow  any  other  occupations  to  distract 
him  from  the  task  of  putting  it  into  shape. ^ 

1  Dean  Stanley's  Letters,  etc.,  by  R.  E.  Prothero  (John  Murray, 
1895),  p.  443  :  "  What  you  have  done  has  been  good  and  valu- 
able ;  but  like  other  theological  writings  it  has  been  transient, 
suited  to  one  generation  more  than  to  another.  But  this  work 
should  be  of  a  deeper  kind — the  last  result  of  many  theological 
thoughts  and  experiences,  into  which  your  whole  soul  and  life 
might  be  thrown,  all  the  better  because  the  truths  of  which 
you  speak  had  been  realized  by  suffering." 

1 


St.  John's  Epistles 


This  letter  expresses  an  ideal  for  old  age  which 
is  apparently  very  seldom  realized  in  fact.  From ' 
this  point  of  view  old  age  is  mostly  disappointing. 
But  I  have  called  attention  to  it  because  the 
ideal  was  certainly  realized  in  wonderful  per- 
fection in  the  case  of  John  the  son  of  Zebedee, 
if  the  traditional  account  of  his  life  is  trust- 
worthy. On  this  critical  matter  I  shall  have 
more  to  say  directly.  But  I  will  begin  by 
reminding  my  readers  of  the  traditional  account 
derived  from  the  New  Testament  and  the 
second-century  writers. 

John,  then,  is  described  as  one  of  two  brothers, 
James  and  John,  sons  of  a  master-fisherman  of 
the  lake  of  Galilee  named  Zebedee.  He  was 
not  only  a  Galilaean,  for,  according  to  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  "  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved,"  who 
is  identified  in  the  tradition  with  the  son  of 
Zebedee,  had  some  special  connection  with 
Jerusalem  as  well  as  Galilee.  He  had  a  home 
there  apparently,^  and  he  "  was  known  unto  the 
high  priest,''  so  far  at  least  as  to  be  admitted 
by  the  servants  to  the  court  of  the  high  priest 
to  witness  the  examination  of  Jesus,  and  to  be 
allowed  to  bring  in  Peter.'     But  he  can  have 

1  John  xix.  27.  2  xviii.  15-16. 


Introduction 


had  but  a  simple  education.  In  the  eyes  of  the 
Jewish  leaders  Ee  and  Peter  are  reported  to  be 
"  unlearned ''  men,  who  lacked  the  training  in 
the  Jewish  schools  which  qualified  for  the 
position  of  a  teacher.  In  fact,  "  they  had  not 
been  to  college."  ^ 

What  sort  of  man  in  disposition  John  was, 
we  can  judge  in  part  from  the  fact  that  our 
Lord,  who  called  Simon  "Eock-man,"  called 
him  and  his  brother  "  Sons  of  Thunder. ""  The 
mild,  sentimental  young  man  depicted  by  the 
artists  must  be  as  unlike  as  possible  to  the 
real  rugged  young  fisherman,  with  his  passionate 
soul.  This  man,  then,  passed  through  profound 
experiences  in  the  school  of  the  great  prophet, 
John  the  Baptist,  and  thereafter  in  the  deeper 
school  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  We  hear  of  special 
experiences  which  were  his,  not  shared  by  all  the 
apostles — -how  Peter  and  James  and  John  con- 
stituted a  sort  of  inner  circle  among  the  Twelve, 
how  the  zeal  of  the  Sons  of  Thunder  in  particular 
was  rebuked  and  their  ambition  quenched,* 
how  John  was  singled  out  (if  indeed  it  be  he) 

1  Acts  iv.  13.     The  English  words  "  unlearned  and  ignorant 
men  "  ara  too  strong. 

2  Luke  ix.  54-5  ;  Mark  x.  35  ff. 


St.  John's  Efistles 


as  "  the  disciple  whom  Jesus  loved."  Besides 
lie  of  course  shared  the  common  experiences  of 
all  the  apostles  culminating  in  the  death  of  Jesus 
on  the  cross  and  in  His  resurrection  from  the 
dead  and  His  ascension  and  His  mission  of 
the  Spirit.  Afterwards  John  is  found  prominent 
among  the  Twelve  in  Jerusalem,  being  mentioned 
again  and  again  alone  with  Peter. ^  At  a 
comparatively  early  point  of  the  narrative  of 
the  Acts  he  passes  out  of  sight ;  but  St.  Paul 
in  his  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  reckons  him 
among  "  the  pillars  "  of  the  Church  with  James, 
the  Lord's  brother,  and  Peter,  at  his  second 
visit  to  Jerusalem  there  recorded.*  This  would 
have  been  about  sixteen  or  twenty  years 
after  our  Lord's  death  and  resurrection.  By 
this  time  John's  brother  James  had  been  put  to 
death  by  the  Jews,  and  some  eighteen  to  twenty 
years  later  Peter  and  Paul  were  martyred  at 
Rome.  Then  in  a.d.  70  Jerusalem  was  de- 
stroyed, and  the  old  Jewish  world,  as  it  had 
been,  centred  upon  Jerusalem  and  its  temple, 
ceased  to  exist.  Whether  just  before  this  or 
earher  (for  the  moment  is  not  specified),  the 
very  well  supported  tradition   of   the   second 

1  Acts  i.  13,  iii.  1— iv,  19,  viii.  U,  »  Gal.  ii,  9, 


Introduction 


century  assures  us  that  John,  with  other  of  the 
Apostles,  passed  to  Asia  Minor,  which  became 
the  last  home  of  the  apostolic  company,  Philip 
going  ultimately  to  Hierapolis,  but  John  with 
Andrew  to  Ephesus.  Here,  in  wholly  new 
surroundings,  we  hear  of  him  as  venerated  and 
loved.  ''  John,  who  leaned  on  the  breast  of 
the  Lord,  who  became  a  priest  wearing  the 
'  petalon  '  (the  Jewish  high-priest's  golden  plate 
— this  may  be  either  intended  as  metaphor  or 
as  literal  fact),  both  witness  and  teacher/* 
There  probably  ^  he  suffered  persecution  for 
his  faith,  apparently  under  Domitian,  who  began 
to  reign  in  a.d.  81  and  died  in  96,  for  he  was  the 
John  who  from  his  place  of  exile  at  Patmos  saw 
the  visions  of  the  Apocalypse.  Moreover,  from 
Ephesus  as  a  centre  he  was  active  in  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Churches  of  Asia.  "  Listen,'* 
says  Clement  of  Alexandria,  '^  to  a  legend  which 
is  no  legend  but  very  history,  which  has  been 
handed  down  and  preserved  about  John  the 
Apostle.  When  on  the  death  of  the  tyrant  he 
returned  from  the  Isle  of  Patmos  to  Ephesus, 

1  But  Tertullian  brings  him  to  Rome  to  be  plunged  into  a 
cauldron  of  boiling  oil  before  the  Porta  Latina  and  then  banished 
to  Patmos . 


St.  John's  Efistles 


lie  used  to  go  away  when  he  was  summoned 
to  the  neighbouring  districts  as  well,  in  some 
places  to  establish  bishops,  in  others  to  organize 
whole  churches,  in  others  to  ordain  to  the  clergy 
some  one  of  those  indicated  by  the  Spirit/'  And 
then  he  tells  the  touching  and  familiar  story  of 
the  zeal  and  love  which  St.  John  showed  in  the 
recovery  of  a  lapsed  disciple — the  young  man 
who  had  joined  a  band  of  robbers  and  become 
their  chief.  Then  we  hear  how  zealous  he  was 
against  heresy,  so  that  he  would  not  stay  in  the 
bath-house  with  Cerinthus,^  and  how  zealous 
he  was  to  the  very  end  to  teach  the  Church  he 
was  leaving  the  lesson  of  mutual  love,  ''  Little 
children,  love  one  another.'' "  Finally,  we  hear 
how  he  was  persuaded,  not  without  a  divine 
revelation,  to  commit  his  Gospel  to  writing, 
partly  intending  to  supplement  the  other  Gospels 
already  existing  and  known,  and  so  wrote  the 
"  spiritual  Gospel,"  as  Clement  calls  it ;  and 
thus,  having  survived  even  to  the  time  of 
Trajan,  i.e.  a.d.  97,  when  he  must  have  been 
about  ninety  years  old,  he  fell  asleep  at  Ephesus. 
The  chronology  of  this  account  of  St.  John's 

1  See  below,  p.  114. 

2  This  tradition  is  not  heard  of  till  the  fourth  centiirj\ 


Introduction 


later  activity  presents  difficulties.  It  seems 
to  crowd  too  much  into  the  very  last  years. 
Tradition,  we  must  remember,  is  hardly  ever 
accurate  even  when  it  is  substantially  true. 
But,  as  a  whole,  it  comes  on  a  basis  of  second- 
century  consent,  along  manifold  lines,  which 
would  almost  seem  indisputable. 

Am  I  not  right  in  saying  that  if  this  singularly 
well-authenticated  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  is  true,  it,  and  the  accompanying 
First  Epistle,  do  realize  wonderfully  the  ideal 
of  an  old  man  who  devotes  himself  at  the  last 
to  writing  what  shall  summarize  in  the  most 
effective  form  the  experience  and  meditation 
of  a  lifetime  ?  The  Gospel  enshrines  the  aged 
disciple's  memory  of  his  Master,  doubtless  often 
put  into  words,  but  only  now  at  last  into  writing, 
for  the  express  purpose  of  succouring  the  faith 
of  the  Church  already  distressed  by  currents 
of  subversive  opinion.  The  Epistle,  which 
is  a  sort  of  commentary  on  some  of  the  leading 
ideas  of  the  Gospel,  brings  out  into  emphasis 
the  slowly  matured  fruit  of  his  long  experience 
and  deep  and  constant  reflection  about  human 
life  and  its  fellowship  with  the  divine  in  the 
light  of  the  Incarnation.     Truly,  so  regarded, 


8  St.  John's  Efistles 

the  Epistle  wliicli  we  are  to  seek  to  study 
remains  among  the  most  priceless  of  human 
testimonies. 


§2 

But  the  value  of  the  witness  of  our  Epistle 
depends  greatly,  indeed  in  its  distinctive  quality 
wholly,  upon  the  substantial  truth  of  the 
tradition  of  its  origin. 

Assuredly  the  idea  of  the  true  life  for  man 
which  is  here  unfolded — the  life  lived  in  the 
light,  utterly  unworldly,  of  unselfish  fellowship 
and  pure  self-control — does,  if  we  set  ourselves 
to  study  it,  set  our  heart  aglow  quite  without 
reference  to  the  author  of  it.  It  is  so  human 
and  simple,  yet  so  rich  and  satisfying.  If  men 
in  general  would  adopt  it  and  live  by  it,  there 
is  no  question  that  it  would  remedy  the  diseases 
of  society.  Short  of  this  there  is  no  doubt  that 
if  there  were  everywhere  in  evidence  a  Christian 
church,  really  organized  to  live  the  life,  even 
though  it  were  everywhere  a  small  minority, 
it  would  have,  as  the  early  Christian  church  had 
in  the  heathen  world,  an  infinite  force  and 
attractiveness.    In  the  midst  of  a  world  per- 


Introduction  9 


meated  by  obscuring  and  corrupting  influences, 
it  would  stand  as  ''  a  city  set  on  a  hill "  and  as 
*'  salt '"  which  had  not  lost  its  savour.  Again, 
short  of  this,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  every 
individual  who  makes  this  idea  of  what  a  man's 
life  can  be  his  own  and  faithfully  lives  by  it, 
becomes  among  his  fellows  a  sort  of  rock  amidst 
shifting  sands.  But  St.  John  is  not  merely 
promulgating  an  idea,  like  a  philosopher,  he  is 
asserting  a  fact.    And  there  is  the  rub. 

This  ideal  of  human  life  contradicts  the  selfish 
and  sensual  assumptions  on  which  human  life 
is  generally  based.  St.  John  certainly  does 
not  conceal  this.  But  then  is  it  natural  ?  and 
how  is  it  to  be  made  possible  ?  Here  comes 
in  the  point  of  his  witness. 

St.  John's  fundamental  assurance  is  that  the 
life  which  he  would  have  men  live  is  in  the 
deepest  sense  natural  and  true — that  is  in 
accordance  with  fundamental  reality — because 
it  is  fellowship  with  the  eternal  and  only  enduring 
life  and  being,  which  is  the  basis  of  our  own, 
the  life  and  being  of  God.  And  he  and  his 
fellows  have,  he  claims,  through  their  special 
experience,  been  allowed  to  receive  indisputable 
assurance  of  this.    For  they  had  experience  in 


10  St.  John's  Efistles 

Jesus  of  Nazareth  of  tlie  perfect  human  life, 
and  on  indisputable  evidence,  as  it  seemed  to 
them,  were  led — almost  forced — to  believe  that 
what  was  exhibited  before  their  eyes  in  a  man's 
life  was  nothing  else  than  the  eternal  life  of 
God  manifested  to  men — that  Jesus  Christ  was 
the  only-begotten  Son  of  God,  Himself  incarnate 
God.  Thus  what  has  been  proved  to  be  in 
accordance  with  the  will  and  being  of  God 
must  be  both  possible  and  natural. 

There  have  been  in  other  generations  and 
there  are  in  our  own  agnostics  and  even  atheists 
who  have  summoned  men  to  live  the  true  and 
noble  life,  though  they  see  in  vast  nature  no 
signs  of  moral  sympathy  and  no  good  evidence 
of  a  God  of  love  and  righteousness,  but  only 
of  a  world-force  which,  if  not  brutal,  is  un- 
conscious and  therefore  indifferent.  And  we 
must  be  thankful  that  they  are  so  noble  and  so 
defiant  of  nature.  It  is  magnificent,  but  it  is, 
after  all,  an  irrational  nobility,  a  splendid  fana- 
ticism. For  of  what  use  can  it  be  for  a  tiny 
portion  of  the  universe  to  raise  the  standard  of 
rebellion  against  a  vast  whole  which  must 
infallibly  swallow  up  and  absorb  our  puny  race 
with  its  strangely-kindled  aspirations  ? 


Introduction  11 


If  the  higliest  life  is  to  have  rational  ground 
or  hope  or  goal,  there  must  be  behind  it  something 
eternal,  something  which  belongs  to  the  whole 
of  which  we  form  a  part — an  ''  Eternal  not 
ourselves  making  for  righteousness  "  and  love 
with  which  we  can  co-operate.  Man  can  live 
the  good  life  with  good  hope  only  if  God  is  good, 
and,  because  God  is  God,  good  must  be  the 
final  goal  of  all.  That  is  St.  John's  conviction, 
and  he  can  base  it  on  nothing  but  revelation — 
God's  own  self-disclosure. 

We  need  not  exaggerate  the  gloom  of  nature. 
The  European  philosophers  who — apart  from 
any  question  of  revelation — have  set  their  whole 
mind  and  devoted  their  whole  life  to  investigate 
reality,  from  Plato  and  Aristotle  and  Plotinus 
down  to  our  own  time,  have  in  great  measure, 
and  by  a  great  majority,  and  in  the  greatest 
instances,  found  themselves  either  authorized 
or  constrained  to  declare  that  goodness — the 
idea  or  force  of  good — is  at  the  heart  of  the 
universe.  And  the  plain  man  cannot  give  up 
the  hope.  Nevertheless,  the  doctrine  of  the 
philosophers  has  been  full  of  hesitations  and 
qualifications  and  contradictions,  and  has  never 
succeeded  in  convincing  the  plain  man,   who 


12  St.  Johi's  Epistles 

for  his  part  remains  bewildered.  After  all, 
Nature  is  a  sphinx.  A  confession  of  ignorance 
or  doubt  about  the  character  of  the  world-force 
seems  to  be  the  most  justifiable  attitude.  Nor 
in  our  day  can  we  flee  for  refuge  to  a  conclusion 
which  in  earlier  ages  has  sometimes  seemed  to 
men  satisfactory — the  conclusion  that  there 
are  two  principles  in  the  universe,  a  good  and  a 
bad,  in  perpetual  conflict,  and  that  nature  and 
human  nature  have  fellowship  with  both.  For 
now  we  know  this  at  least,  that  nature  is  a 
closely-knit  unity,  and  the  force  which  operates 
there  is  one  only — one  God,  if  God  it  can  be 
called.  Then  the  question  recurs — of  what  sort 
is  this  force  or  God  ?  What  is  its  mind  and 
purpose  for  man  and  the  world,  if  mind  or  purpose 
it  have  at  all  ? 

Surely  if  there  be,  or  may  be,  a  God,  and  if  the 
rational  mind  and  conscience  of  man  is  capable 
of  fellowship  with  Him  from  whom  it  came, 
it  is  natural  that  He  should  disclose  Himself, 
not,  of  course,  in  contradiction  of  nature  which 
is  His  creation,  nor  of  what  the  brooding  mind 
of  man  has,  on  the  whole,  been  able  to  discover 
from  nature,  for  our  reason  is  His,  but  by  way 
of  increase  of  light  and  confirmation  of  assur- 


Introduction  13 


ance.  Surely  in  man's  moral  conscience,  where 
lie  feels  that  he  gets  nearest  to  God,  God  does 
everywhere  in  varying  degrees  of  clearness 
reveal  Himself,  not  by  way  of  argument,  but  as 
a  voice  from  above  or  from  the  beyond,  guiding, 
threatening,  and  cheering.  Why  should  not  this 
self-disclosure  of  God  have  gone  further? 

At  this  point  we  must  recognize  that  the 
essence  of  the  Jewish  witness  was  that  this 
self-disclosure  of  God  is  a  fact.  Over  hundreds 
of  years  prophets  had  appeared  amongst  them 
who,  not  in  virtue  of  any  conclusions  which 
they  had  reached  by  reasoning,  but  because 
they  had  actually  heard,  in  whatever  way,  the 
voice  of  God,  proclaimed  as  "  the  word  of  Je- 
hovah "  His  righteous  will  for  His  people.  His 
tremendous  justice,  and  His  unalterable  goodness. 
Jehovah — called  "  The  Lord  "  in  our  Bible — 
was  Israel's  God,  but  more  and  more  clearly 
had  it  been  proclaimed  that  He  was  the  one 
and  only  God,  the  creator  and  sustainer  and 
ruler  of  all  that  is.  Thus  it  was  that  the 
prophets  of  Israel  became,  what  in  a  memorable 
phrase  Athanasius  calls  them,  "  the  sacred 
school  of  the  knowledge  of  God  and  the  spiritual 
life  for  all  mankind."" 


14  St.  John's  Efistles 

Now  we  must  recognize  that  almost  every 
good  thing  which  has  diffused  itself  upon  this 
planet  has  arisen  or  been  discovered  in  one 
spot  and  has  thence  spread  in  a  widening  area. 
Why  then,  we  ask,  should  not  the  Jews  have 
been  in  the  matter  of  religion — what  the  Romans 
were  in  the  matter  of  government  or  law,  and 
the  Greeks  in  art  and  intellect — not  indeed  its 
sole  source,  but  the  source  of  it  in  its  highest 
quality,  greatest  authority,  and  freest  adapt- 
ability? And  I  think  any  one  who  reads  the 
sequence  of  Jewish  prophets — ruthlessly  leaving 
out  what  he  finds  too  obscure  to  understand, 
which  is  generally  of  secondary  importance — 
will  receive  a  profound  impression  :  will  be 
deeply  disposed  to  believe  that  they  really  spoke, 
as  they  believed  themselves  to  speak,  the  word 
of  the  Lord. 

"  St.  John,'"  as  we  perceive  in  his  Gospel,  is 
full  of  the  Jewish  faith  in  the  prophetic  scriptures. 
He  knows  that  salvation  was  of  the  Jews.  And 
there  is  no  doubt  that  He  of  whom  St.  John 
wrote  assumed  the  teaching  of  the  Jewish 
prophets  as  the  background  and  basis  of  all 
He  taught  about  God.  It  is  of  great  importance 
to  recognize   this.      But   in   his   Epistle  John 


Introduction  15 


makes  almost  no  reference  to  the  Old  Testament. 
His  mind  is  concentrated  on  Him  in  whom  the 
old  prophetic  succession  is  fulfilled — in  whom 
His  disciples  recognized  One  greater  than  the 
prophets — in  whom  they  came  to  believe  as 
the  eternal  Son  of  God  incarnate.  The  meaning 
of  this  conviction  in  its  bearings  on  human  life 
is  expounded  in  our  Epistle,  but  its  grounds 
are  recorded  in  the  Gospel,  in  both  books  by 
one  who  claims  to  be  an  eye-witness.  Was  he 
an  eye-witness  of  what  he  relates  ?  Did  these 
things  really  happen  ?  And  was  the  "  beloved 
disciple  "  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  really  John  the  * 
son  of  Zebedee  ?  The  value  of  our  author's 
teaching  about  human  life  and  its  possibilities  ■■ 
he  makes  to  depend,  and  it  does  really  depend, 
upon  the  trustworthiness  of  his  claim  to  report 
truly  about  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

§3 

This,  then,  is  the  question  :  Can  we  rely  upon 
it  that  when  the  writer  of  our  Epistle  speaks  of 
what  he  and  his  associates  have  ''  heard,''  "  seen 
with  their  eyes,''  "  beheld,"  and  "  handled  with 
their  hands,"  when  he  asserts  that  what  he 


16  St.  John's  Efistles 

declares  to  us  is  what  they  in  common  have 
"  seen  and  heard/'  ^  he  is  referring  to  a  real 
objective  experience  and  that  he  is  speaking  the 
truth  ?  Or,  again,  when  he  speaks  of  the 
mission  of  the  Son  of  God  as  something  which 
'*  we  have  seen  "  and  of  which  consequently 
we  can  "  bear  witness  "  ?  *  And,  granted  that 
the  Epistle  proceeds  from  the  same  author  as 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  can  we  assume  not  only 
that  the  experience  on  which  he  bases  his  teaching 
is  the  experience  related  in  that  Gospel,  but 
that  he  really  relates  things  as  they  occurred  ? 
And,  finally,  can  we  suppose  that  "  the  beloved 
disciple "  who  records  or  professes  to  record 
his  experience  so  particularly '  was  John  the 
disciple  and  apostle  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  son 
of  Zebedee,  as  the  Church  has  always  supposed  ? 
Now,  with  regard  to  all  these  questions  there 
has  been  infinite  discussion  of  late  years  and 
infinite  confusion  in  the  world  of  criticism. 
Books  advocating  almost  every  conceivable 
view  have  poured  and  are  pouring  from  the 
press.  In  literary  Germany  the  traditional 
view  of  St.  John's  authorship  has  almost  passed 

1  1  John  i.  1-3.  2  iv.  14. 

3  joijja  xix.  35,  XX.  30-1,  xxi.  24. 


Introduction  17 


out  of  sight,  except  for  the  one  name  of  Theodor 
Zahn.  And  though  that  is  not  at  all  the  case 
in  England — for  Sanday,  Armitage  Robinson, 
Salmond,  Strong,  Chase,  Kichmond,  Ramsay, 
Drummond,  Holland,  and  others  among  our  best 
living  or  quite  recent  scholars,  assure  us  that 
the  traditional  view  is  tenable  and  indeed  the 
most  reasonable  view — yet  the  critical  world 
is  greatly  divided  and  the  problem  is  often 
regarded  as,  if  not  insoluble,  yet  far  from  so- 
lution. Plainly  then,  though  I  am  not  writing 
for  scholars,  I  must  say  something  about  it, 
and  this  is  not  an  easy  task  on  a  subject  so 
blackened  with  controversy,  and  when  those 
for  whom  I  am  writing  cannot,  in  most  cases, 
go  thoroughly  into  it. 

I  would  say,  then,  by  way  of  preliminary, 
that  you  must  not  attribute  any  final  authority 
to  the  critical  fashions  of  the  day.  During  the 
last  fifty  years  a  student  has  seen  many  ''  ac- 
cepted results  "  of  criticism  pass  out  of  vogue. 
Modern  historical  criticism  is  a  real  science, 
to  which  we  owe  the  greatest  additions  to  our 
knowledge  of  what  the  past  history  of  mankind 
has  really  been.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
it  has  opened  to  us  a  new  world,  or  many  new 


IS  St.  John's  Efisiles 

worlds.  But  you  reach  a  point,  and  sometimes 
it  is  soon  readied,  where  what  can  be  strictly 
called  historical  science  passes  into  conjecture 
and  into  the  region  where  presuppositions  and 
prejudices  have  free  play  for  lack  of  positive 
evidence.  Indeed,  there  is  no  history  without 
presuppositions.  But  the  main  stream  of  Ger- 
man criticism,  which  has  been  the  basis  of 
English  criticism,  has  been  "  rationalistic  "  ; 
and  this  means  broadly  that,  for  whatever 
reasons,  it  refuses  to  admit  as  credible  the  real 
incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  in  the  sole  person 
of  Jesus  Christ,  or  the  reality  of  such  "  nature 
miracles ''  as  our  Lord's  birth  of  a  virgin 
mother,  or  the  resurrection  of  His  body  from 
the  tomb,  or  such  miracles  as  are  ascribed  in 
the  Fourth  Gospel  with  so  much  precise  detail 
to  our  Lord — the  turning  of  the  water  into 
wine,  the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand,  and  the 
raising  of  Lazarus.  Obviously,  if  it  is  from  the 
start  taken  as  incredible  that  these  things  can 
have  happened,  something,  even  though  it  be 
sometliing  violent,  must  be  done  to  dispose  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel  as  authentic  history.  I  do 
not  say  that  there  would  have  been  no  critical 
problem,    apart    from    these    prejudices,    con- 


Introduction  19 


cerning  the  Fourth  Gospel — very  far  from  it. 
But  that  the  criticism  of  the  last  fifty  years  has, 
on  the  whole,  had  these  prejudices  among  their 
main  motives  cannot  be  denied.  Let  me  quote 
one  of  the  sanest  and  wisest  of  the  critics,  to 
whom  I  am  going  to  refer  you  again,  the  Uni- 
tarian scholar  Dr.  Drummond,  who  is  main- 
taining the  (to  me)  impossible  thesis  that  the 
author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  did  not  really 
mean  or  pretend  to  be  writing  literal  history, 
and  among  his  grounds  sets  this — "  I  must 
frankly  add  that,  on  general  grounds  affecting 
the  whole  question  of  the  miraculous,  I  am 
unable  to  believe  that  such  miracles  as  the 
turning  of  water  into  wine  and  the  raising  of 
Lazarus  were  really  performed. '^  *  Now,  I  am 
writing  in  the  main  for  those  who  are  without 
such  an  invincible  prejudice.  I  hope  the  bulk 
of  my  readers  are  those  who  find  it  credible 
that,  in  a  world  such  as  ours  is  known  in 
experience  to  be,  God,  if  really  there  be  a  good 
and  just  God,  should  have  taken  action  for  the 
redemption  of  the  world,  and  that  this  redemp- 
tion, after  long  preparation,  should  have  been 

^  Dr,   James  Drummond,   Character   and   AtitJiorship  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  (Williams  &  Norgate,  1903),  p,  426, 


20  St.  John's  Ejnstles 

finally  effected  by  God  Himself  entering  into  our 
human  life  by  an  incarnation  in  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  that  such  a  person,  embodying 
as  He  did  the  life-giving  will  of  the  Creator 
for  the  purposes  of  recreation,  should  have 
been  the  occasion  for  divine  "  powers  "  to  work 
upon  Him  and  through  Him  as  much  above 
the  normal  as  must  have  been  God's  original 
acts  of  creation.  If  we  find  this  credible,  still 
we  should  not  be  credulous.  We  should  not 
rush  into  believing  anything  that  is  told  us  ;  but 
we  should  be  ready  to  accept  evidence,  the  whole 
body  of  evidence,  moral  and  material.  It  is 
this  real  openness  of  mind  that  is  asked  of  us, 
and  it  is  this  openness  of  mind  that  those  for 
whom  rationalistic  criticism  is  the  last  word 
of  wisdom  do  not  possess. 

At  the  same  time  I  am  most  anxious  that  we 
should  not  disparage  or  ignore  historical  criticism, 
as  applied  to  the  Bible  ;  and  that  we  should  not 
take  refuge  in  a  supposed  infallibility  in  the 
authority  or  judgment  of  the  Church  in  matters 
of  authorship.  Historical  criticism,  where  it 
really  remains  open-minded,  is  capable  of 
correcting  many  mistakes  in  tradition.  Many 
of  the  greatest  leaders  in  this  new  science  have 


Introduction  21 


been  men  totally  free  from  rationalism  and  full 
of  real  reason.  They  have,  in  my  judgment, 
fairly  disproved  many  traditional  authorships 
in  the  Old  Testament,  not  only  without  loss  to 
the  faith,  but  with  the  result  that  we  have  a 
far  more  spiritually  useful  view  of  the  Old 
Testament  literature.  And  for  my  own  part, 
seeing  no  ground  for  believing  that  the  Church 
was  gifted  with  infallibility  in  its  critical  judg- 
ments, I  am  disposed  to  admit  that  a  letter — 
"  the  second  Epistle  of  Peter  '' — professing  to  be 
by  an  apostolic  eye-witness,*  was  probably  in 
fact  written  under  his  name  by  a  much  later 
author.  Here  the  case  is  very  different  from 
the  case  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John.  Of  the 
latter  "  there  was  never  any  doubt  in  the 
Church. '^  It  was  one  of  the  agreed-upon  Gospels, 
which  the  second-century  Church  regarded  as 
the  indisputable  pillars  of  its  spiritual  world. 
Its  authority  as  the  authentic  work  of  St.  John 
rests  upon  the  strongest  grounds  of  external 
and  internal  evidence,  as  I  shall  go  on  to  help 
you  to  discover  for  yourselves.  The  second 
Epistle  of  Peter,  by  contrast,  can  claim  only 
the  weakest  external  evidence,  and  the  internal 

1  2  Peter  i.  16,  18. 


22  St.  John's  Epistles 

evidence  is  most  ambiguous.  After  its  appear- 
ance to  siglit,  late  in  the  second  century,  it  was 
rejected  in  part  of  the  Church  and  seriously 
doubted  by  some  of  the  most  influential  writers 
who  had  to  do  with  the  formation  of  the  Canon 
of  the  New  Testament,  by  Origen  and  Eusebius, 
and  such  serious  doubts  are  recorded  by  Jerome. 
It  finally  only  got  into  the  Canon  "  by  the  skin 
of  its  teeth,'"  if  I  may  so  express  it.  Neverthe- 
less, it  did  get  in,  and,  if  our  suspicions  are 
justified,  the  Church  made  a  mistake  in  the 
matter  of  authorship.  For  it  would  never  have 
got  into  the  Canon  except  as  believed  to  be  by 
St..  Peter.^  Thus,  in  approaching  the  question 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  we  should  approach  it 
with  a  really  open  mind,  remembering  also  the 
debt  under  which  really  open-minded  criticism 
has  recently  laid  us  in  the  vindication  of  our 
New  Testament  documents.  Has  it  not  recently 
given  us  overwhelming  assurance  that  our 
second  and  third  Gospels  and  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  were  really  written  by  the  men,  John 

^  It  is  important  to  recognize  that  admission  to  the  Canon  was 
a  judgment  on  authenticity  or  aj)ostolic  authorship,  not  a 
judgment  on  spiritual  value.  Thus  Eusebius  assumes  that  if 
the  Apocalypse  was  not  by  John  the  Apostle  but  by  another 
John,  it  would  fall  out  of  the  Canon,  as  a  matter  of  course. 


Introduction  23 


Mark  and  Luke  the  physician,  who  had  the 
best  possible  opportunities  for  collecting  the 
most  authentic  information  ?  Has  it  not  vin- 
dicated the  simple  claims  of  St.  Luke's  preface  ? 
If  "  St.  John's  Gospel  "  were  proved  false  to 
history  and  no  work  of  St.  John,  still  the  true 
figure  of  Jesus  would  remain,  as  it  were,  photo- 
graphed in  the  other  Gospels ;  still  we  should 
know  how  He  spoke  and  much  of  what  He 
spoke  ;  and  still  the  conclusion,  based  in  the 
minds  of  the  Twelve  upon  the  experience  there 
recorded,  would  remain  as  it  stands  in  the 
Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  Peter.  And  still, 
to  take  one  step  further,  the  Catholic  Creeds 
would  stand  justified  by  these  Gospels  and 
Epistles.  I  do  not  say  that  the  loss  of  St.  John's 
special  testimony  would  not  be  a  portentous 
loss  ;  but  it  would  not  be  destructive  of  the 
whole  fabric.  Nevertheless,  I  am  persuaded 
that  no  such  sacrifice  will  be  required  of  us  by 
the  evidence. 

Plainly  I  cannot  attempt  to  argue  the  question 
here.  That  would  require  a  whole  volume, 
and  belongs  more  properly  to  a  commentary 
on  the  Gospel.  All  that  I  can  do  is  (1)  to  seek 
to  advise  my  readers  how  to  proceed,  if  they 


24  St.  John's  Epistles 

want  to  instruct  themselves  in  the  evidence 
(2)  to  state  the  conclusions  to  which  I  have 
been  led  myself. 

(1)  As  to  authors  to  be  consulted,  I  would 
advise  a  would-be  student,  who  has  only  a 
moderate  amount  of  leisure  to  give  to  such 
matters,  to  read  Dr.  Drummond's  book  already 
referred  to.^  Dr.  Drummond  cannot  believe 
that  the  Fourth  Gospel  can  be  historical  in  many 
of  its  main  features,  and  he  cannot  believe  the 
full  doctrine  of  Christ's  person,  which  that  Gospel 
not  only  asserts  but  asserts  on  the  authority  of 
Christ  Himself.  Thus,  so  far  as  he  has  natural 
prejudices,  they  would  be  obviously  against 
attributing  the  Gospel  to  St.  John.  Neverthe- 
less he  is  a  profoundly  honest  and  candid  as 
well  as  learned  man,  and  after  a  careful  review 
of  all  the  evidence,  and  a  careful  examination 
of  all  rival  theories,  he  concludes  his  book  thus  : 
*'  I  give  my  own  judgment  in  favour  of  the 
Johannine  authorship.''  And  it  is  worth  noting 
that  in  the  course  of  his  argument  he  says  of 
"  those  who  see  in  the  Gospel  nothing  but  pure 
history  "  (I  think  he  should  have  said  "  those 

1  Character  and  Authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  (WilliamB  & 
Norgate,  1903). 


Introduction  25 


who  are  prepared  to  accept  the  Gospel,  including 
its  miracles,  as  historical "),  "  I  do  not  wonder 
that  they  look  upon  the  Johannine  authorship 
as  irrefragably  established/^  ^  I  think,  in  fact, 
that  Dr.  Drummond  underrates  the  evidence 
in  part,  and  I  do  not  think  he  overrates  it  any- 
where ;  and  I  have  recommended  the  study 
of  his  book  because  the  bias  of  partiality  in 
favour  of  tradition  cannot  be  ascribed  to  him. 
Next  I  would  recommend  the  study  of  Mr. 
Wilfrid  Eichmond's  Gospel  of  the  Rejection.^ 
The  most  real  obstacle  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
traditional  account  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  lies,  no 
doubt,  in  the  differences  both  in  respect  of  the 
story  of  our  Lord's  ministry  and  of  the  tone  of 
our  Lord's  discourses  between  the  Fourth  Gospel 
and  the  Synoptics.  This  difficulty  has  presented 
itself  to  me  again  and  again  as  very  grave, 
though  examination  in  detail  always  reduces 
the  difficulty  to  very  much  smaller  proportions. 
It  is  dealt  with  very  ably  and  in  part  satisfac- 
torily by  Dr.  Drummond.  But  I  do  not  think 
that  there  is  any  book  which  is  more  illuminating 
on  the  relation  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  to  the  other 
three  than  Mr.  Richmond's,  which  has  not,  I 

»  p.  426.  2  joiin  Murray,  1906. 


26  St.  John's  Epistles 

think,  received  nearly  enough  attention ;  and 
it  is  written  so  as  to  need  no  student's  apparatus 
in  order  to  be  able  to  read  it  intelligently. 

Then,  for  an  example  of  thorough-going 
scepticism  as  to  the  traditional  accounts  of  the 
Gospel,  I  would  say,  read  Dr.  Latimer  Jackson's 
Problem  of  the  Fourth  Gosfel}  It  is  no  doubt 
an  able  specimen  of  the  kind  of  destructive 
criticism  which  will  accept  nothing  unless  it  is 
demonstrated,  and  can  suggest  possible  doubts 
as  to  the  strongest  pieces  of  evidence.  My  own 
feeling  after  a  careful  reading  of  the  book  was 
that  it  represents  an  even  grotesque  exaggeration 
of  the  merely  critical  spirit — the  capacity  for 
pulling  anything  to  pieces — and  that  it  is  desti- 
tute of  the  gift  of  constructive  imagination  so 
necessary  for  an  historian.  It  ranks,  to  my 
mind,  with  the  writings  of  some,  on  the  other 
extreme  flank  of  the  army  of  historians,  who 
defend  ecclesiastical  tradition  at  all  costs.  That 
is  to  say,  it  is  among  the  books  which  produce 
on  the  mind  of  any  one  who  believes  that 
good  historical  evidence  ought  to  be  accepted, 
though  it  can  never  be  strictly  demonstrative, 
the  opposite  impression  to  that  intended. 

^  Cambridge  Univ.  Press,  1918. 


Introduction  27 


(2)  Now  I  am  going  to  give  tlie  conclusions 
about  the  authorship  and  character  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  and  the  Epistle  to  which  I  have 
been  led  myself. 

{a)  I  cannot  entertain  any  doubt  that  the 
Epistle  is  by  the  same  author  as  the  Gospel. 
The  late  Professor  James  Hope  Moulton  (and 
there  is  no  better  authority)  says  of  all  three 
Epistles,  "  No  one  with  the  faintest  instinct 
of  style  would  detach  them  from  the  Gospel."  ' 
I  think  the  most  reasonable  view  is  that  the  first 
Epistle  was  written  immediately  after  the  Gospel 
or  a  sort  of  commentary  on  it.  About  the 
second  and  third  Epistles  I  will  speak  when 
we  come  to  them. 

(&)  Equally  I  cannot  doubt  that  the  Gospel 
is  of  one  piece.  (Of  course  I  except  the  narrative 
of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  which  does 
not  seem  to  belong  to  this  Gospel,  though,  from 
internal  evidence,  I  think  it  may  be  regarded 
as  certainly  historical.)  I  hold  with  Dr. 
Gardner  that  "  The  whole  book  is  of  uniform 
character  and  is  the  literary  creation  of  a  single 
author,  including  the  last  chapter,  which  is  of 

1  Peake's  Commentary  on  the  Bible  (Jacks,  1019) :  "  The 
Language  of  the  N.T.,"  p.  592. 


28  St.  John's  Epistles 

the  nature  of  a  supplement."  ^  The  unity  of 
this  Gospel  seems  to  me  to  be  as  self-evident 
as  the  unity — shall  I  say  ? — of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Galatians.  It  is  not  the  work  of  an  editor 
working  upon  sources,  but  the  original  work  of 
a  man  inspired  by  one  declared  purpose — to 
confirm  faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God  * — who 
believed  himself  (or  represented  himself  as  so 
believing)  that  he  had  within  his  own  memory 
the  materials  for  his  narrative  and  needed 
nothing  else. 

When  he  issued  the  completed  book  he  w^s 
surrounded  by  a  circle  of  friends  (xxi.  24).  So 
also  he  is  represented  to  us  in  the  traditions. 
And  we  need  not  exclude  the  idea  that  if  one  of 
them  was  a  better  Greek  scholar  than  the  author 
he  may  have  corrected  the  Greeks''     Dictation 

^  Dr.  Percy  Gardner,  Ephesian  Gospel,  p.  53. 

2  John  XX.  31. 

3  This  hypothesis  has  been  suggested  in  view  of  the  strong 
evidence  that  John  the  Apostle  was  the  author  of  the  Apocal5"pse. 
How  then,  it  is  said,  can  he  have  written  both  works  ?  In  the 
Apocalypse  the  author  writes  at  times  a  strangely  ungrammatical 
Greek.  "  He  writes  Greek,  as  the  Duke  of  Wellington  spoke 
French,  with  a  great  deal  of  courage  "  and  force— but  with  great 
inaccuracy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Gospel  and  Epistle  are  in 
quite  accurate  Greek.  At  the  same  time  the  Greek  of  the 
Gospel  and  Epistle  is  totally  lacking  in  the  Greek  spirit.  And 
if  the  Apocalj'pso  had  been  merely  revised  and  corrected  without 


Introduction  29 


to  shortliand  writers  and  mere  verbal  repro- 
duction of  what  was  dictated  was  a  common 
practice  of  the  Empire.  But  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  the  scribes  often  did  a  good  deal 
more  than  mere  transcription. 

(c)  The  author  intends,  with  the  utmost 
human  intensity,  to  convey  the  impression  that 
the  Gospel  is  true  history.  He  begins  his 
Epistle  by  stressing  the  evidence  of  eye  and  ear 
and  hand  on  which  his  message  is  based.  It 
is  from  what  he  beheld  in  the  human  person, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  that  he  reached  the  belief 
that  He  was  more  than  human.  And  it  seems 
to  me  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  mistaking 
the  intense  consciousness  of  the  Evangelist  that 
he  is  recording  what  he  himself  saw  and  heard. 
This  impression  is  conveyed  by  particular  state- 
ments :  "  We  beheld  his  glory  "  ' ;  He  "  mani- 
fested "  it  at  Cana  "  and  his  disciples  believed 
on  him."'  ^  After  His  resurrection  the  disciples 
"  remembered  ''  ^  something  that  Jesus  had 
actually  said.  At  the  death  upon  the  cross, 
the  author  was  an  eye-witness  :   "He  that  hath 

substantial  alteration  by  some  one  better  instructed  in  Greek 
grammar,  it  would  present  a  stjde  not  different  from  that  of 
the  Gospel  and  Epistle. 

1  John  i.  14.  2  ii,  11.  3  ^j  22. 


30  St.  John's  Efistles 

seen  hath  borne  witness,  and  his  witness  is  true."  ^ 
And  the  circle  of  his  friends  at  the  end  of  the 
appendix — the  cap.  xxi. — add  their  testimony  : 
"  This  is  the  disciple  which  beareth  witness  of 
these  things,  and  wrote  these  things  :  and  we 
know  that  his  witness  is  true.''  ^ 

Moreover,  the  writer's  mind  is  to  represent 
other  men  as  well  as  himself  as  coming  to  their 
belief  in  Jesus  by  what  they  themselves  saw  and 
heard.  So  John  the  Baptist  (i.  34) ;  so  Philip 
would  have  it  be  with  Nathanael  (i.  46) ;  so 
was  it  with  the  multitude  in  Jerusalem  (ii.  23) 
and  with  the  people  of  Sychar  (iv.  42).  So 
Jesus  is  represented  as  restoring  in  His  disciples 
an  impression  long  ago  received,  not  by  any 
words  but  by  going  Himself  back  to  the  scene 
of  their  original  experience,  that  they  might 
come  to  find  Him  there  and  that  the  place 
might  by  its  associations  revive  the  impression 
(x.40-1). 

Some  of  these  expressions  could  easily  be 
attributed  to  the  skilful  literary  artist  who  was 
ref resenting  himself  as  an  eye-witness,  without 
having  really  been  so.  And  writers  in  many 
ages  have,  for  literary  purposes,  assumed  such 

1  John  xix.  35.  2  j-xi.  24. 


Introdtiction  31 


a  character  without  any  intention  to  deceive. 
Moreover,  the  early  Christian  centuries  produced 
many  "  pseudonymous ''  books — books,  that 
is,  written  in  the  name  of  some  well-known 
man,  as  a  literary  device,  and  perhaps  some  of 
them  (but  not  all)  without  any  intention  to 
deceive.  But  just  as  we  can  more  or  less 
certainly  distinguish  among  paintings  pro- 
fessing to  be  portraits  of  real  persons  those 
which  are  mere  efforts  of  imagination  and  those 
which  (though  we  do  not  know  the  features  of 
the  person  represented)  are  obviously,  as  we  say, 
**  the  real  living  man,''  so  I  think  it  is,  again 
more  or  less,  in  literature.  True,  there  have 
been  certain  supreme  geniuses  in  imaginative 
biography  or  history.  But  certainly  such  a 
genius  is  not  likely  to  have  arisen  in  the  first 
two  centuries.  The  disguise  in  the  existing 
efforts  of  this  kind  belonging  to  this  period  is 
confessedly  very  thin.^  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Fourth  Gospel   conveys,  as   intensely   as    any 

^  "  Pseudo-epigraphical  composition,"  says  Dr.  Burkitt, 
"  among  Jews  and  Christians  had  its  OAvn  rules.  Not,  of  course, 
that  the  authors  tried  to  make  the  hero  of  old  times  prophesy  or 
write  in  accordance  with  real  historical  verisimilitude :  that  would 
indeed  be  a  literary  anachronism." — J.  T.  S.  vol.  xiii,  No.  51, 
p,  374,    (The  italics  are  mine.) 


32  St.  John's  Epistles 

record  of  experience  can  convey  it,  tlie  impression 
of  a  man  whose  senses  were  extraordinarily 
keen  ;  who  was  moulded  by  what  he  saw  ;  who 
drew  his  conclusions  from  his  experiences  ;  who 
gives  an  astonishingly  vivid  impression  both  of 
what  he  saw  and  heard  and  of  what  observations 
were  made  upon  it  by  others.  All  the  way 
through  the  narrative  I  at  least  receive  an 
irresistible  impression  that  this  is  the  record 
of  an  eye-witness.  Thus  when  Dr.  Drummond, 
who  cannot  on  general  grounds  believe  that 
Jesus  really  raised  Lazarus  from  the  dead, 
suggests  that  the  author  did  not  seriously 
intend  to  represent  it  as  an  actual  historical 
occurrence,  but  only  to  embody  a  spiritual 
impression  in  such  a  guise,^  I  believe  he  is  as 
wrong  as  it  is  possible  to  be.  The  author  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  meant,  with  all  the  intensity  of 
his  nature,  to  convey  an  impression  of  what 
had  actually  occurred.  This  is  certain,  it  seems 
to  me,  on  literary  grounds.  But  for  myself  I 
confess,  as  I  have  said,  that  I  cannot  resist 

1  "  If  it  be  designed  to  set  forth  in  a  vivid  and  picturesque  form 
the  truth  that  Jesus  is  the  resurrection  and  the  life,  and  by  His 
commanding  spiritual  authority  raised  the  dead  from  the  grave 
of  moral  corruption  and  released  them  from  the  stifling  grasp  of 
Pharisaic  teaching,  then  history  returns  in  a  new  guise." — p.  64. 


Introduction  33 


the  impression  that  he  not  only  meant  this,  but 
was  justified  in  meaning  it — that  he  had  actually 
seen  what  he  describes. 

I  must  make  a  distinction,  however,  as  truth 
compels  me  to  do,  between  the  incidents  and  the 
speeches.  I  believe  St.  John  gives  us  wonderfully 
vivid  memorials  of  what  he  had  seen ;  and, 
substantially,  in  the  discourses  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  a  truthful  account  of  the  claim  and 
teaching  of  Jesus  in  Jerusalem  and  in  conflict 
with  the  Jewish  leaders.  In  each  discourse  we 
seem  to  discern  actual  phrases  of  Jesus — so  that  it 
is  essential  that  we  should  add  the  testimony  of 
these  discourses  to  that  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels, 
if  we  are  to  get  a  fairly  full  conception  of  His 
teaching.  Thus  I  cannot  doubt  that  assertions 
by  our  Lord  of  His  own  pre-existence,  such  as 
are  contained  in  the  discourses  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  were  really  made.  Indeed,  pre-existence 
is  inseparable  from  the  claim  of  divine  sonship 
as  represented  in  the  Synoptics.^    Also  I  cannot 

1  Matt.  xi.  27,  xxi.  36-7,  xxiv.  36  (R.V.),  xxvi.  63,  and  xxviii. 
18,  with  parallel  passages  in  St.  Mark  and  St.  Luke.  Those 
passages  imply  a  superhuman  personality  which  can  hardly  be 
thought  of  as  coming  into  existence  by  a  human  birth.  They 
suggest  something  which  belongs  of  right  to  the  being  of  God 
and  has  come  or  been  sent  into  this  world. 


34  St.  John's  Epistles 

doubt  that  our  Lord  did  really  speak  of  Himself 
as  the  Bread  of  Life  and  of  our  eating  His  flesh 
and  drinking  His  blood,  and  did  really  announce 
the  mission  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  speak  of  His 
future  function,  as  is  recorded  in  different  parts 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  I  do  not  think  that  the 
unhesitating  beliefs  of  the  apostolic  Church  could 
have  been  what  they  were  without  such  teach- 
ing on  the  part  of  the  Master  Himself.  Thus  I 
believe  the  promise  of  xiv.  26 — that  the  Holy 
Spirit  would  quicken  the  memory  of  the  Twelve 
and  make  it  faithful — to  have  been  really  given 
and  really  fulfilled. 

But  this  concerns  the  substance  of  the  dis- 
courses. As  regards  their  form  I  cannot  resist 
the  impression  that  the  manner  and  method  of 
Jesus  in  teaching  is  more  accurately  represented 
in  the  Synoptics ;  and  that  it  is  in  the  discourses 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel  constantly  difficult  to 
distinguish  between  the  original  speech  of  Jesus 
and  the  form  which  that  utterance  had  gradually 
taken  in  the  apostle's  mind.  Memory  and 
meditation,  we  feel,  have  both  combined  to 
produce  the  result.  Psychologically  we  should 
judge  the  apostle  to  have  been  a  man  upon 
whom  visual  and  tactile  experience   made   an 


Introduction  35 


impression  which  survived  distinct  and  un- 
modified ;  but  the  impressions  made  through 
the  ear  by  what  he  heard  from  the  great  Teacher 
were  fused  with  his  later  meditations,  so  that 
though  you  can  be  sure  the  germ  or  main  sub- 
stance of  the  discourse  is  truly  to  be  ascribed 
to  Jesus,  you  cannot  say  the  same  of  its  form. 
But  as  to  the  relation  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  to 
the  other  three,  both  in  respect  of  incident  and 
discourse,  I  must  be  content  to  refer  my  readers, 
if  they  will  pursue  the  subject,  to  Mr.  Richmond's 
book  and  to  Dr.  Drummond's. 

{d)  Now  I  want  to  pass  for  a  moment  from 
the  mind  of  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  to 
that  of  the  Church  which  received  it.  The 
second  century  and  the  third  produced  a  crop 
of  legendary  Gospels  and  Acts  of  Apostles  which 
had  considerable  vogue.  And  the  intention  of 
the  Church,  which  resulted  in  the  establishment 
of  the  unique  authority  of  the  four  Gospels 
before  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  was 
to  distinguish  from  all  spurious  productions  the 
genuine  writings  of  the  apostles  and  their  com- 
panions. They  would  not  have  intentionally 
accepted  a  pseudonymous  work,  however  edify- 
ing. There  is  an  apocryphal  book  called  the 
4 


36  St.  John's  Epistles 

Acts  of  Paul  and  Thecla,  whicli  Sir  William 
Ramsay  and  other  scholars  believe  to  contain 
some  important  element  of  true  history ;  and 
this  writing,  or  some  writing  on  which  it  is 
based,  was  in  vogue  at  the  end  of  the  second 
century.  Thus  it  is  instructive  to  notice  that 
Tertullian  discusses  and  refuses  to  accept  a 
certain  writing  "  falsely  ascribed  to  Paul '" 
which  made  mention  of  this  Thecla,  for  he  would 
have  those  who  quote  this  authority  know 
"  that  a  presbyter  in  Asia  who  composed  that 
writing,  adding  it  out  of  his  own  to  the  list  of 
Paul's,  was  convicted  of  his  act,  and,  having 
confessed  that  he  did  it  for  love  of  Paul,  was 
deposed  from  his  office."  ^  This,  which  is  quite 
incidentally  mentioned,  shows  the  attitude  which 
the  Church  took  towards  "  pseudonymous " 
compositions.^ 

Again,  it  is  really  monstrous  to  suggest,  as  is 
frequently  done,  by  critics  who  surely  ought  to 
know  better,  that  when  the  Alexandrian  Clement 
calls  St.  John's  Gospel  the  distinctively  "  spiritual " 
one  (by  contrast  to  the  others,  which  were  held 

^  De  haptismo,  17. 

2  It  is  fair  to  admit  that  this  particular  composition  was  not 
only  pseudonymous  but  also  contrary  to  the  discipline  of  the 
Church, 


Introduction  37 


to  give  the  "  bodily  "  things  ^)  he  means  that 
St.  John's  Gospel  is  only  intended  as  allegory 
and  not  history.  I  say  this  is  monstrous 
because,  on  the  one  hand,  Clement's  words 
admit  of  another  perfectly  natural  interpreta- 
tion, viz.  that  the  Synoptics  are  simply  concerned 
to  record  things  as  they  were  seen  and  heard, 
and  St.  John  is  constantly  occupied  in  supplying 
an  interpretation — the  spiritual  meaning  of  the 
things ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  if  Clement 
does  not  explain  himself,  his  greater  and  more 
famous  successor  at  Alexandria,  Origen,  does 
so,  with  great  elaboration.  He,  as  is  well 
known,  thinks  that  though  the  bulk  of  what  is 
written  in  the  Bible  as  history  is  real  history, 
and  the  bulk  of  its  precepts  intended  to  be 
literally  obeyed,  yet  this  is  not  the  case  with  all 
that  is  to  be  found  there.  There  are  things 
there  related  as  history  or  prescribed  as  duties 
which  cannot  have  really  occurred  or  be  intended 
to  be  practised  literally,  both  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  in  the  New — including  the  Gospels. 
These  are  inserted  in  order  that  their  falsity, 
according  to  the  letter,  being  manifest,  may 
stimulate  our  minds  to  rise  to  the  spiritual  or 

^  Clem.  ap.  Euseb.  E,  H,  vi.  14. 


38  St.  John's  Epistles 

allegorical  meaning  of  the  Scriptures,  of  which 
the  Alexandrians  made  so  much.  He  thus 
believes  that  there  are  in  the  Bible  historical- 
sounding  narratives  which  are  not  historically 
true,  but  are  allegorical.  But  he  expressly 
would  have  us  exclude  from  this  category  of 
**  pure  spirituals  "'  (as  he  calls  them)  "  the  things 
written  concerning  the  Saviour.'"  "  That  no 
one,"  he  writes,  "  may  suppose  us  to  make  the 
general  assertion  that  there  is  no  true  history 
because  some  of  it  is  not  so  ;  or  no  legislation 
which  is  to  be  literally  observed  because  there 
is  some  which  literally  is  absurd  or  impossible ; 
or  that  the  things  written  concerning  the  Saviour 
are  not  true  in  respect  of  the  outward  facts  ; 
or  that  his  legislation  is  in  no  part  to  be  literally 
observed — (to  avoid  such  a  misconception)  be  it 
said  that  it  is  clearly  present  to  our  minds  that 
there  is  (in  the  Bible)  true  history ;  .  .  .  for 
there  are,  in  fact,  many  more  things  which  are 
historically  true  than  those  purely  spiritual 
which  are  interwoven.''  ^  Then  he  goes  on  to 
quote  the  precepts  of  the  ten  commandments, 
etc.,  as  intended  to  be  literally  observed.    And 

^  From  De  Principiis,  iv.,  quoted  at  length  in  the  Pliilocalia. 
See  Robuison's  edit.  (Camb,  Press,  1893),  p.  27. 


Introduction  39 


in  another  place  he  says  that  certain  things  in 
the  Gospels  "  have  a  spiritual  meaning,  though 
the  historical  truth  of  them  must  be  first  assumed 
to  remain '' — as,  for  example,  our  Lord's  healings, 
which  actually  happened  and  have  a  spiritual 
meaning,  or  His  raisings  of  the  dead  to  life.  He 
both  did  at  a  certain  time  miracles  of  this  kind, 
as  in  raising  Lazarus  and  others,  and  he  also 
continually  does  it  spiritually.^  On  the  whole, 
I  believe  the  truth  to  be  that  though  spiritual 
romances  were  popular  (and  Clement  was  fond 
of  quoting  them),  yet  the  Church  generally 
sedulously  sought  to  distinguish  genuine  from 
spurious,  and  attached  the  greatest  importance 
to  questions  of  apostolic  authorship  ;  and  would 
not — not  even  the  Alexandrians  who  carried 
allegorical  interpretation  to  such  an  excess — 
have  tolerated  the  idea  of  Gospels  which  were 
not  true  in  fact. 

(e)  I  find  the  evidence  supplied  by  the  Gospel 
itself  such  as  ought  to  convince  us  that  it  must 
have  been  written  (and,  therefore,  the  Epistle 

1  See  fragment  of  Origen  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  in 
Rufinus's  version  {Lommatzsch),  vol.  vi.  p.  269.  On  these  passages 
and  the  current  misunderstanding  of  the  mind  of  the  Alexandrians 
I  have  written  an  appended  note :  see  at  the  end  of  this  volume, 
p.  236. 


40  ;S^.  Johns  E'pistles 

also)  by  a  Palestinian  Jew,  thorouglily  ac- 
quainted with  the  whole  district  and  with 
Jerusalem,  thoroughly  at  home,  moreover,  in 
the  situation  which  was  utterly  and  irrecoverably 
overthrown  by  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
and  its  temple  in  a.d.  70  ;  further,  that  it  must 
have  been  really  written  by  one  of  the  most 
intimate  circle  of  the  disciples,  and  that  John 
the  son  of  Zebedee  is,  without  being  named, 
clearly  indicated  as  the  "  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved."  I  think  the  old  argument  of  Godet 
and  Westcott  to  this  effect  remains  untouched 
in  substance. 

( (/)  I  find  the  external  evidence,  however 
often  I  review  it,  pointing  to  John  the  Apostle 
as  the  author  of  the  Gospel,  almost  overwhelm- 
ing. I  do  not  think  the  fabric  of  Lightfoot's 
argument  has  been  the  least  overthrown.^  I 
feel  myself,  therefore,  constrained — none  the 
less  really  because  gladly — to  accept  the  con- 
clusion that  the  tradition  is  true. 

But  there  is  one  qualification  which  I  wish  to 
make,   A  few  scholars  who  believe  that  the  Gospel 

1  On  the  silence  of  Ignatius  I  should  wish  to  call  attention  to 
Mr.  Bardsley's  argument  in  J.  T.  8.  vol.  xiv.  No.  54,  p.  207, 
and  No.  66,  p.  489. 


Introduction  41 


records  a  real  experience  of  "  the  beloved  disciple  " 
who  wrote  it,  are  attracted  by  the  tradition  of 
there  having  been  two  Johns,  one  the  apostle 
the  son  of  Zebedee,  and  another  called  John  the 
Presbyter.  This  latter  John  is  a  most  shadowy 
figure.  I  am  tempted  to  doubt  his  having 
really  existed.'  But  these  scholars  are  disposed 
to  identify  with  him  the  disciple  who  wrote 
the  Fourth  Gospel.  They  think  he  may  have 
been  originally  (what  the  author  of  this  Gospel, 
in  their  judgement,  must  have  been)  a  Jew  of 
good  position  in  Jerusalem — possibly  the  rich 
young  ruler  who  was  offended  by  the  stern 
counsel  of  Jesus, ,  but  whom  Jesus  is  said 
to  have  "  loved  "  (Mark  x.  21)  ;  they  suppose 
him  to  have  been  among  the  early  disciples, 
and  to  have  returned  to  allegiance  after  his 
temporary  alienation.  They  think  he  may 
have  been  the  host  at  the  last  supper,  and 
so  have  occupied  the  position  there  ascribed  to 
him  in  the  Gospel,  and  have  passed  into  the 
innermost  circle  of  the  disciples,  so  that  he 
could  write  the  Fourth  Gospel  as  a  true  record 
of   the   experience   in   which   he   had   shared. 

^  See  Dom  Chapman's  John  the  Presbyter  (Clarendon  Press, 
1911). 


42  St.  John's  Epistles 

Tlien  tliey  accept  a  late  statement  made  on 
early  authority  ^  (but  as  it  seems  to  me  certainly 
under  a  misunderstanding)  tliat  John  the  son 
of  Zebedee  was,  like  his  brother,  slain  by  the 
Jews.  And  they  think  that  the  other  John, 
the  beloved  disciple,  passed  into  his  place  in 
tradition,  and  did  and  suffered  all  that  is  re- 
corded of  the  apostle  at  Ephesus,  and  wrote  the 
Johannine  books.- 

This  opinion  seems  to  me  highly  improbable 
from  more  than  one  point  of  view.  I  find  it 
difficult  even  to  treat  it  seriously.  But  it  gives 
us  for  our  Gospel  an  author  who  had  the  experi- 
ence and  knowledge  and  intimacy  which  the 
Gospel  implies,  and  for  our  Epistle  an  author  who 
could  truly  speak,  as  John  the  son  of  Zebedee 
could  have  spoken,  of  what  he  had  seen  and 
heard  and  gazed  upon  and  touched,  as  the  basis 
for  the  great  conclusion  which  he  there,  in  a 
measure,  develops.  Thus  I  wish  to  make  men- 
tion of  this  theory  of  the  authorship  and  to 
recognize  that  for  our  purposes  it  would  suffice  : 

1  On  the  ascription  of  this  statement  to  Papias  see  Arm. 
Robinson,  Historical  Character  of  St.  John's  Gospel  {Longmans), 
pp.  64  &.,  who  deals  with  the  matter  admirably. 

2  Dr.  Swete  suggested  before  his  death  such  a  view  as  the 
above.     See  J.  T.  8.  xvii.  pp.  371  ff. 


Introduction  43 


it  would  make  the  Gospel  a  true  record  of  a 
real  experience  and  justify  tlie  claim  of  our 
Epistle. 

Nevertheless  I  affirm  the  authorship  of  St. 
John  the  Apostle ;  and  I  should  like  to  add 
that,  after  all  these  years  of  discussion  from 
every  point  of  view,  I  think  the  subject  is  ripe 
for  decision. 

§4 

There  are  only  two  further  points  which  have 
to  be  touched  upon  in  this  introduction — the 
first  is  the  character  of  St.  John's  mysticism, 
and  the  second  is  his  claim  to  be  called  a  philo- 
sopher.   And  first  as  to  his  mysticism. 

(1)  By  the  term  "mystics"  we  describe  a 
class  of  thinkers  who  have  three  special  char- 
acteristics— first,  that  they  are  not  content 
with  a  surface  view  of  the  world  or  with  its 
external  aspect,  but  (in  Wordsworth's  phrase) 
**  see  into  the  life  of  things  "  ;  secondly,  that 
they  have  an  intensely  vivid  perception  of  the 
unity  of  all  things  in  God — they  see  God  in  all 
things  and  all  things  in  God,  and  find  in  com- 
munion with  God,  aimed  at  and  in  part  realized 
here  and  now,   the  chief  occupation  of  their 


44  St.  John's  Epistles 

lives  ;  thirdly,  tliat  their  method  of  arriving  at 
truth  is  not  the  method  of  argument  or  discursive 
reasoning,  but  the  method  of  intuition :  they 
do  not  arrive  at  truth  by  critical  inquiry  or  an- 
tagonism to  error,  but  by  a  sort  of  positive  vision 
or  feeling.  Now  St.  John  has  all  those  charac- 
teristics to  an  intense  degree.  He  is  thus  in- 
tensely mystical.  But  the  experiences  on  which 
many  mystics  have  depended  have  been  private 
experiences  of  their  own  inward  consciousness, 
or  visions  which  have  been  shown  only  to  their 
inward  spiritual  eye.  It  is  this  which  has 
made  their  affirmations  so  often  unconvincing 
to  other  men  not  endowed  with,  like  gifts,  and 
even  fantastic  or  unmeaning.  But  St.  John's 
method  is  exactly  the  opposite.  He  had  de- 
pended upon  external  historical  experiences  to 
quicken  and  nourish  his  soul.  He  had  lived 
by  facts,  been  taught  by  facts,  moulded  by 
facts.  His  idealism  is  the  fruit  of  his  external 
experiences.  If  this  is  not  the  case,  then  he 
must  be  pronounced  wholly  ignorant  of  himself, 
and  that,  as  it  seems  to  me,  no  one  who  can 
study  and  appreciate  the  Gospel  or  the  Epistle 
ought  to  be  able  to  believe. 
Thus  the  *'  mysticism  "  of  St.  John  would  be 


Introduction  45 


riglitly  set  in  opposition  to  any  method  of 
presenting  religion  wliicli  is  mainly  logical  or 
argumentative,  or  to  any  presentation  of  it 
wliicli  is  mainly  concerned  with  visible  institu- 
tions or  rites  and  ceremonies — to  what  we  may 
call  '*  externalism."  But  it  is  in  no  way  opposed 
to  the  emphasis  on  historical  facts.  Nay,  no 
one  could  emphasize  them  more  than  St.  John 
does ;  nor,  I  may  add,  is  it  anyway  opposed  to 
sacramentalism,  that  is  to  say,  the  system 
which  sees  the  principle  of  the  Incarnation — 
the  communication  of  the  divine  through  what 
is  visible  and  tangible — perpetuated  in  the 
visible  Church,  with  its  visible  and  symbolical 
rites  as  instruments  of  the  divine  action.  St. 
John's  mysticism  is  the  sort  of  mysticism  which 
requires  the  historical  creeds  and  which  coheres 
naturally  with  the  idea  and  authority  of  the 
Church  and  the  sacraments. 

Our  "  Epistle  " — which,  as  I  have  said,  has 
few  of  the  characteristics  of  an  epistle,  but  is 
rather  a  commentary  on  the  ideas  of  the  Gospel, 
embodying  in  infinitely  solemn  utterances  what 
St.  John  believed  to  be  the  final  outcome  of  all 
his  experiences — impresses  us,  like  the  writings 
of  all  the  greatest  mystics,  alike  by  its  simplicity 


46  St.  John's  Epistles 


and  its  profundity.  If  these  utterances  about 
God  and  about  liuman  life — as  momentous  as 
they  are  simple — are  indeed  trustworthy  and 
true,  it  makes  the  whole  difference  to  us.  They 
are  to-day  just  what  we  want.  It  is  just  about 
these  momentous  simplicities  that  the  souls  of 
men  have  been  startled  and  harassed  with  even 
agonizing  doubts  during  the  horrifying  experi- 
ences of  the  past  years.  Nothing  could  do  us 
more  good  to-day  than  to  reflect  again  on  what 
such  a  man  as  wrote  this  Epistle  found,  after 
long  years  of  brooding  meditation,  to  be  the 
final  outcome  of  all  his  vividly  remembered 
experiences  of  the  life,  teaching,  death,  and 
resurrection  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

(2)  The  other  question  on  which  I  want  to  say 
a  word  is  the  question  whether  we  must  rank 
the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  the  Epistle 
which  accompanied  it  as  a  philosopher.  For 
it  has  been  a  frequent  objection  to  St.  John's 
authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  that  a  man 
such  as  he  was,  with  such  slender  education, 
could  never  have  become  such  a  philosopher 
as  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  undoubtedly 
was. 

Now  if  by  a  philosopher  we  mean  simply  a  man 


Introduction  47 


who  loved  truth  above  all  things,  who  thought 
profoundly  and  who  had  by  his  experiences 
been  provided  with  adequate  matter  to  think 
about,  of  course  he  was  a  philosopher.  But  if 
it  is  meant  that  our  author  must  have  been 
among  the  academic  students  of  his  day,  and 
must  have  been  acquainted  with  philosophical 
literature,  for  example,  with  Philo  or  with  the 
unknown  contemporary  of  St.  Paul  who  wrote 
at  Ephesus  under  the  name  of  the  ancient 
philosopher  Heraclitus,i  I  would  say  there  is 
not  the  slightest  reason  to  imagine  it  and  every 
reason  to  doubt  it.  It  has  become  more  and 
more  evident  that  all  the  materials  for  the 
prologue  to  the  Fourth  Gospel  can  be  found  in 
the  Old  Testament  language  about  the  word  of 
God,  coupled  with  the  conception  of  the  divine 
wisdom  in  Proverbs  and  the  later  Sapiential 
books."     No  doubt  there  were  learned  men  of 

^  On  the  Letters  of  Heraclitus  see  my  Exposition  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Ephesians,  p.  253.  I  name  him  here  simply  as  an 
Ephesian  philosopher. 

^  "  We  are  moving  still  further  away  from  the  old  belief  that 
the  origins  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  are  to  be  sought  in  Alexandria 
and  that  every  presentation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  must 
have  passed  through  the  moulding  hands  of  PhUo."  Eendel 
Harris,  Odes  and  Psalms  of  Solomon  (Camb.  Press,  ed.  2,  p. 
xiv). 


48  St.  John's  EfisUes 

tlie  academic  type  in  Judaea  in  St.  Jolin's  youth, 
and  in  Ephesus  in  St.  Jolin's  old  age,  but  he  had 
little  or  no  connection  with  them.  The  learned 
men,  first  in  Judaea  and  then  in  the  larger 
Greek  world,  showed  themselves  either  violently 
opposed  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  His  teaching, 
or  for  the  most  part  totally  indifferent  to 
it.  And  our  Lord  had  shown  Himself  strangely 
indifferent  to  the  alienation  of  the  learned 
class  in  Judaea,  and  even  thankful  for  it.  "  In 
that  same  time,"  writes  St.  Luke,  "  He  rejoiced 
in  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  said,  I  thank  thee,  0 
Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  thou 
didst  hide  these  things  from  the  wise  and  under- 
standing, and  didst  reveal  them  unto  babes ; 
yea,  Father,  for  so  it  was  well  pleasing  in  thy 
sight.''  If  we  begin  to  think,  we  can  well 
understand  this  thankfulness  on  our  Lord's 
part,  which  at  first  hearing  sounds  so  strange 
and  repugnant.  For  undoubtedly  *'  the  wise 
and  understanding  "  of  the  Jewish  synagogue 
would  only  have  been  persuaded  to  welcome 
a  religion  so  conceived  and  so  expressed  as  to 
be  profoundly  alien  both  to  the  mass  of  mankind 
and  to  the  learned  Greeks  of  their  own  time. 
And  a  religion  so  conceived  and  so  expressed— 


Introduction  49 


say  by  St.  Paul — as  to  be  welcome  to  the  philo- 
sophic Greeks  would  never  have  been  homely 
enough  to  be  intelligible  to  the  common  people. 
It  would  have  been,  like  Stoicism  or  Platonism, 
the  religion  of  a  select  class.  But  a  catholic 
faith  must  be  first  of  all  a  faith  intelligible  to  the 
common  man,  directed  to  common  needs  and 
expressed  in  common  human  language.  This 
is  what  our  Lord  intended  His  religion  to  be. 

But  it  is  most  untrue  that  our  Lord  was  in- 
different to  intellect  or  thought.  No  teacher 
ever  set  himself  so  deliberately  to  make  the 
ordinary  man  think  for  himself.  He  was  not 
willing  merely  to  instruct.  He  would  force 
men  to  think  for  themselves.  This  was  His 
purpose  in  teaching  by  parables.  Men  were  to 
find  in  their  observations  of  common  things, 
by  deep  thinking  about  them,  the  laws  and 
principles  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  And  we  may 
say  that  no  teacher  ever  succeeded  as  our  Lord 
succeeded  in  making  common  men  think.  The 
apostles  were  scoffed  at  as  unlearned  men, 
without  the  training  which  qualifies  men  to  be 
teachers.  But  out  of  this  original  apostolic 
circle — in  which  we  are  not  including  St.  Paul, 
who   was   a   more  "  highly  educated "  man— 


50  St.  Johns  Efistles 

proceeded  some  wonderful  documents — the  first 
Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  the  Epistle  of  St.  James, 
the  Epistles  of  St.  John.  These,  indeed,  are  the 
writings  of  men  who  have  asked  themselves 
the  great  questions — who  have  been  forced  up 
against  the  great  enigmas  and  have  attained 
the  great  convictions.  They  had  passed  through 
no  learned  academy,  and  had  nothing  more  than 
the  ordinary  man's  acquaintance  with  learned 
phraseology.  But  assuredly  they  had  learned 
to  think.  In  particular  there  is  not,  in  all 
history,  I  venture  to  say,  a  greater  instance 
than  St.  John's  Epistle  of  a  long-continued  and 
momentous  experience  moulding  a  simple  and 
observant  mind,  therein  stirring  great  questions 
and  generating  great  principles,  which,  long 
revolved  and  brooded  upon,  are  at  last  produced, 
for  the  enrichment  of  mankind,  with  a  simplicity 
proportioned  to  their  depth. 

Thus  there  is  nothing  of  the  academic  philo- 
sopher in  the  author  of  the  first  Gospel — nothing 
that  is  not  drawn  from  the  Old  Testament 
wisdom  and  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
the  experience  of  common  human  life.  It  was 
on  this  basis  only  that  the  principles  of  a  catholic 
religion    must   be    laid.     The    wisdom    of    the 


Introduction  51 


schools,  whether  Rabbinic  or  Greek,  was  not  to  be 
in  the  foundations.  But  when  once  the  founda- 
tions had  been  laid  and  the  Church  established 
on  a  creed  suited  to  the  plain  man,  a  creed  of 
facts  and  simply  religious  ideas,  it  was  to 
show  its  capacity  to  develop  a  philosophy  and  a 
theology — a  task  for  which  all  the  learning 
accessible  to  the  age  would  be  needed.  Only 
this  was  not  the  task  of  the  first  generation  of 
witnesses.  Their  task  was  with  the  everlasting 
foundations,  with  the  witness  to  the  facts,  and 
the  message  about  God  and  man  which  can 
never  be  revised,  for  it  only  reads  out  into 
common  human  words  what  lies  plain  to  ob- 
servation, when  once  it  is  shown  us,  in  the 
teaching  and  life,  the  death  and  resurrection 
of  Jesus  Christ. 


THE   EPISTLES   OF   ST.   JOHN 

§  1.     1  JOHN  i.  1-4 

the  word  of  life 

Explanatory  Analysis 

St.  John  strikes  the  key-note  of  his  Epistle  by- 
declaring  his  intention  of  communicating  to  us 
an  experience  of  his  own  and  of  his  fellow- 
disciples  which  concerns  what  he  calls  ''  the 
word  of  life.""  What  is  the  meaning  of  this 
expression  ?  It  is  something  of  this  kind. 
Mankind  finds  itself  living  and  struggling  to  live 
■ — doing  things  and  suffering  things  in  order  to 
live.  As  soon  as  it  gains  leisure  and  capacity 
to  think,  it  finds  itself  asking  the  question — 
What  is  the  meaning  of  life  ?  Is  there  any 
purpose  in  all  this  striving  and  struggling  ?  Has 
it  any  adequate  end  ?  What  kind  of  life  is  a 
good  life  ?  We  are  asking  these  questions 
to-day  as  vigorously  as  ever.  To  the  good  Jew, 
however,  there  was  no  doubt  about  the  answer 
to   these   questions. ^     The   Jew   was   intensely 

1  The  only  book  of  the  Old  Testament  which  in  its  original 
form  expressed  a  profound  scepticism  as  to  the  worth  of  life 

62 


The  word  of   life  53 

practical.  He  had  none  of  the  artistic  or 
intellectual  gifts  of  the  Greek.  But  he  under- 
stood, or  was  capable  of  being  made  to  under- 
stand, the  meaning  of  life  and  of  religion  as  a 
way  of  life.  The  most  impressive  utterances 
of  the  Old  Testament  are  about  religion  as  a 
way  of  life.  "  Whence  then  cometh  wisdom  ? 
And  where  is  the  place  of  understanding  ? 
Seeing  it  is  hid  from  the  eyes  of  all  living.  .  .  . 
God  understandeth  the  way  thereof,  and  he 
knoweth  the  place  thereof.  .  .  .  When  he  made 
a  decree  for  the  rain,  and  a  way  for  the  lightning 
of  the  thunder  :  then  did  he  see  it,  and  declare 
it ;  he  established  it,  yea,  and  searched  it  out. 
And  unto  man  he  said.  Behold,  the  fear  of  the 
Lord,  that  is  wisdom  ;  and  to  depart  from  evil 
is  understanding."  ^  "  He  that  would  love  life, 
and  see  good  days,  let  him  refrain  his  tongue 
from  evil,  and  his  lips  that  they  speak  no  guile  : 
and  let  him  turn  away  from  evil,  and  do  good ; 
let  him  seek  peace,  and  pursue  it.  For  the 
eyes  of  the  Lord  are  upon  the  righteous,  and 
his  ears  unto  their  supplication."  ^ 

is  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  which,  we  may  say,  in  its  main  bulk 
stands  in  the  Bible  only  to  be  contradicted. 

1  Job  xxviii,  20-26. 

2  Ps.  xxxiv.  12-16  ;  as  cited  in  1  Pet.  iii.  10-12. 


54  St.  John's  Efistles 

Here  is  indeed  a  clear  doctrine  of  the  good 
of  life,  and  of  morality  and  religion  as  alone 
showing  the  way.  Now,  the  Jew's  conviction 
of  the  good  of  life  and  of  the  way  to  blessedness 
was  based  upon  what  seemed  to  him  to  be  the 
surest  ground — upon  the  divine  word.  Through 
countless  prophets  and  commissioned  teachers 
God  had  assured  man  of  His  good  purpose  and 
taught  him  how  to  co-operate.  Thus  "  the 
word  of  God  ''  in  the  Old  Testament  is  emphatic- 
ally a  "  word  of  life.''  And  St.  John  was  a 
devout  Jew.  In  his  Gospel  he  shows  us,  even 
in  minutest  details,  his  sense  that  Christ  came 
not  to  destroy  or  even  to  originate,  but  to  fulfil 
what  was  written  in  the  old  Scriptures.  But 
in  his  Epistle  he  never  quotes  or  refers  to  the 
Old  Testament.  His  mind  is  wholly  fixed  on  the 
disclosure  of  God's  purpose  for  man  in  Jesus 
Christ,  which  had  fulfilled  and  superseded  all  that 
went  before  it.  This,  to  him,  had  given  "  the  word 
of  life  "  a  quite  new  meaning  and  distinction. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  had  indeed  been, 
like  that  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  a 
*'  word  of  life."  "  A  man's  life  consisteth  not 
in  the  abundance  of  the  things  that  he  possess- 
eth  "  ;  "  The  life  is  more  than  the  food  "  :  "  Seek 


The  word  of  life  55 

first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteousness  "  ; 
"I  came  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may 
have  it  abundantly."  St.  John's  Gospel  in 
particular  is  full  of  teaching  about  the  true  life. 
But  it  was  much  more  than  a  message  about 
life  delivered  by  word  of  mouth.  It  was  more 
even  than  a  perfect  example  of  human  life. 
The  disciples  had  been  led  to  believe  that  under 
the  conditions  of  a  true  human  nature,  in  the 
intelligible  lineaments  of  a  human  character, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  there  had  been  disclosed  to 
them  the  life  which  is  eternal  and  indestructible, 
the  very  life  of  God.  This  is  the  note  which  is 
struck  at  once  in  our  Epistle.  They  had  heard 
Him  with  their  ears,  they  had  seen  Him  with 
their  eyes,  through  all  the  phases  of  His  strug- 
gling mortal  life.  They  had  been  witnesses  of 
His  death.  Under  the  shock  of  this  seemingly 
disastrous  failure  their  faith  in  Him  had  failed. 
But  under  the  experience  of  His  resurrection  it 
had  been  restored  and  more  than  restored. 
They  had  gazed  upon  Him  and  handled  Him 
with  their  hands  after  He  was  risen.  And  the 
summary  result  of  all  this  great  experience  is 
what  had  given  its  meaning  to  St.  John's  phrase 
"  the  word  of  life."    In  the  man  Christ  Jesus 


56  St.  John's  Epistles 

slowly  but  surely  John  and  his  fellows  had  been 
led  to  see  the  manifestation  of  the  eternal  life 
of  God.  Men  had  always  been  disposed  to 
believe  that,  behind  the  transitory  veil  of  nature 
and  the  manifold  types  of  evanescent  life,  there 
was  something  eternal.  But  of  what  sort  who 
could  say  ?  "  No  man  had  seen  God  at  any  time." 
But  now  "  the  only  begotten  Son,"  or  ''God 
only  begotten,^  which  is  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  he  hath  declared  him."  He  with  whom 
in  familiar  intercourse  they  had  had  converse, 
and  of  whom  they  were  commissioned  to  bear 
witness,  was  eternally  with  the  Father,  His  own 
very  life.  This  is  St.  John's  "  message  of  life  "  : 
and  because  it  is  of  such  incomparable  import- 
ance to  every  man,  so  he  and  his  fellows  who 
had  enjoyed  this  original  experience  could  find 
satisfaction  in  nothing  except  in  imparting  it. 
For  the  fellowship  with  God  in  Christ  into 
which  they  had  been  admitted  was  not  to  pass 
away.  The  Church,  indeed,  of  which  they  were 
the  first  members,  existed  for  no  other  purpose 
than  to  perpetuate  both  their  witness  and  their 

^  This  is  the  alteruative  reading  of  John  i.  18.  The  prologue 
to  the  Gospel  and  the  prologue  to  the  Epistle  should  be  read 
together, 


The  word  of  life  57 

experience.  It  was  to  invite  men  through  its 
open  doors  into  a  human  fellowship  which  they 
would  find  to  be  not  human  only  but  divine — 
the  fellowship  of  very  God — the  fellowship  of 
the  Father  and  the  Son. 

That  whicli  was  from  the  beginning,  that  which  we  have 
heard,  that  which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  that  which 
we  beheld,  and  our  hands  handled,  concerning  the  word 
of  life  (and  the  life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen, 
and  bear  witness,  and  declare  unto  you  the  life,  the  eternal 
life,  which  was  with  the  Father,  and  was  manifested  unto 
us)  ;  that  which  we  have  seen  and  heard  declare  we  unto 
you  also,  that  ye  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us  :  yea, 
and  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father,  and  with  his  Son 
Jesus  Christ :  and  these  things  we  write,  that  our  joy 
may  be  fulfilled. 

Notes 
1.  "  The   word  ^  of  life." — In  the  prologue  to 
his  Gospel  St.  John  used  "  the  Word'' — that  is, 
the  utterance  or  self-expression  of  God  * — as  a 

^  So  printed  in  the  margin  of  the  Revised  Version,  and  rightly, 
I  think.  In  the  text  and  in  the  old  version  it  is  printed  "  Word  " 
with  the  capital  letter,  as  if  it  meant  not  the  message  but  the 
person,  the  Eternal  Word. 

2  Dr.  Rendel  Harris,  in  his  Prologue  to  St.  John's  Gospel  (Camb. 
1917),  has  done  a  great  service  in  making  it  more  evident  than 
ever  before  how  the  prologue  to  St.  John's  Gospel  is  moulded 
upon  the  language  of  the  Old  Testament  about  the  Divine 
Wisdom.  But  St.  John  chose  the  expression  Word  and  not 
Wisdom  as  the  name  of  the  Son ;  and  I  think  we  can  no  longer 


58  St.  John's  Epistles 

personal  name  for  the   eternal   Son,  who   was 
incarnate  in  Jesus  Christ.     But  elsewhere  in  the 
Gospel  "  the  word  "  is  used  in  its  more  ordinary 
sense  of  the  message  (ii.  22,  iv.  41,  etc.),  and  it 
is,  I  think,  so  used  here  in  the  Epistle,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  prologue  of  the  Epistle  is 
so  full  of  reminiscences  of  the  prologue  to  the 
Gospel.    I  think  it  is  so  because  *'  the  word  or 
message  of  life ''  (c/.  Acts  v.  20,  "  the  words  of 
this  life  ")  is  a  much  more  natural  expression 
than  "  the  Word  of  Life,''  meaning  the  divine 
person  who   is  the  Life.      I  have  already  ex- 
plained the  significance  of  the  expression  as  a 
description  of  the  divine  message  which  con- 
stitutes the  substance  of  the  Bible — which  "  in 
divers  portions  and  divers  manners  "  had  been 
in  old  times  spoken  by  God  through  prophets 
and  now  in  the  end  had  been  fulfilled  through 
one  who  was  more  than  a  prophet,  even  the 
only-begotten  Son. 

2.  The  experience  of  St.  John  and  his  fellow- 
disciples  is  described  as  "  that  we  have  heard, 
that  which  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  that 
which  we  beheld  [or  gazed  upon],  and  our  hands 

doubt  that  he  used  it  iu  the  Old  Testament   sense   of   divine 
utterance  rather  than  in  the  Greek  sense  of  the  divme  reason. 


The  word  of  life  59 

handled/'  This  is  what  constitutes  the  record 
of  the  Gospels  in  general,  and  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  in  particular.  In  view  of  the  fact  re- 
corded by  St.  Luke  that  our  Lord  gave  Himself 
to  be  "  handled  ''  by  the  disciples  on  the  evening 
of  the  resurrection  {"  handle  me  and  see  ''  i), 
and  eight  days  afterwards  similarly,  as  St.  John 
records,  offered  Himself  to  St.  Thomas,  who 
had  been  absent  on  the  jSirst  occasion,  that  he 
might  feel  His  hands  and  thrust  his  hand  into 
His  side';  in  view  also  of  the  stress  laid  upon 
the  repeated  sights  of  the  risen  Lord  vouchsafed 
to  the  disciples,^  it  is  probable  that  the  last  two 
phrases  which  are  coupled  together,  "  that 
which  we  beheld  [or  gazed  upon],  and  our 
hands  handled,"  refer  specially  to  the  appearances 
of  the  risen  Christ.  And  the  conclusion  reached 
as  a  result  of  all  these  experiences  is  that  in 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  they  had  to  do  not  with  any 
transitory  or  partial  phase  of  life — not  merely 
with  an  exceptionally  good  man — but  with 
something  eternal  and  universal,  "  the  eternal 

^  St.  John  certainly  knew  St.  Luke's  Gospel,  and  assumed 
the  knowledge  of  it  in  those  for  whom  he  wrote ;  see  especially 
how  he  speaks  of  Martha  and  Mary  (xi.  1)  as  known  persons. 
See  Luke  x.  38-9. 

2  John  XX,  27-8.  3  xx.  20,  25,  29-30,  xxi.  14. 


60  St.  John's  Epistles 

life  which  was  with  the  Father,  and  was  mani- 
fested unto  us." 

3.  He  does  not  say  the  "  eternal  life  of  the 
Father,"  but  the  "  eternal  life  which  was  with 
the  Father,"  as  he  says  in  the  prologue  of  the 
Gospel  "  the  Word  was  with  God."  The  life 
which  they  had  beheld  in  Jesus  was  the  life  of 
a  "  person "  distinguishable  from  the  Father, 
but  in  eternal  fellowship  with  Him,  one  in  whom 
the  Father,  before  ever  the  world  was,  found 
His  joy  and  satisfaction — -who  was  and  is  the 
Father's  very  life.  The  doctrine  of  distinctions 
of  persons  in  the  unity  of  the  Godhead  was 
based  upon  the  experience  of  the  disciples. 

4.  This  momentous  conclusion  about  God's 
self-disclosure  in  Christ  is,  so  to  speak,  articu- 
lated into  its  various  meanings  and  aspects  in 
the  Epistle,  and  its  grounds  are  recorded  in  the 
Gospel.  The  grounds  consist  in  a  temporary 
experience  of  a  few  men  extending  over  a  few 
years ;  but  the  experience  of  divine  fellowship, 
into  which  the  original  witnesses  were  thus 
admitted,  is  to  be  permanent,  and  it  is  the 
function  of  the  Church,  or  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  the  Church,  both  to  declare  it  and  to  per- 
petuate it.    This  is  what  St.  John  means  when, 


The  word  of  life  61 

some  sixty  years  after  tlie  Resurrection,  he  ex- 
presses his  desire  to  admit  to  the  full  apostolic 
fellowship  those  for  whom  he  is  now  writing. 
The  world  in  which  St.  John  was  now  living 
was  utterly  different  from  the  Jewish  world  of 
his  youth.  He  was  at  Ephesus,  not  at  Jerusalem 
or  in  Galilee.  And  Ephesus,  Greek  and  Asiatic, 
was  as  different  as  could  be  from  the  towns  of 
Galilee  or  from  Jerusalem.  None  the  less,  the 
old  apostolic  fellowship  is  as  fully  meant  for 
his  present  associates  as  for  those  of  old  times. 
The  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  is  to  bear  its  old 
witness  in  new  surroundings  ;  it  is  to  exhibit  a 
human  fellowship  into  which  all  men  are  to  be 
made  welcome  {"  that  ye  may  have  fellowship 
with  us  ")  ;  and  therein  to  make  the  glorious 
discovery  that  the  human  fellowship  into  which 
they  have  been  admitted  is  also  divine — "  yea, 
and  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father,  and  with 
his  Son  Jesus  Christ." 

The  distinctive  note  of  St.  John's  mysticism, ! 
as  has  been  already  remarked,  is  that  it  is  an 
internal  intuition  of  spiritual  truth  based  upon 
and  moulded  by  external  experiences  or  facts. 
It  can,  therefore,  be  a  corporate  and  not  merely 
individual  conviction,  because  the  facts  were 


62  St.  John's  Epistles 

common  to  all.  It  can  be  tlie  conviction  of  a 
whole  society  ;  and  it  is  only  througli  fellowship 
in  the  society  that  the  witness  to  the  facts  can 
be  realized  in  its  true  meaning.  Thus  the 
comment  of  the  Venerable  Bede — cited  by 
Westcott — is  noticeable  :  "  Blessed  John  shows 
plainly  that  all  who  desire  to  have  fellowship  with 
God  should  first  be  united  to  the  fellowship  of 
the  Church.**  St.  John  or  St.  Paul  would  hardly 
have  understood  our  latter-day  fear  of  "  putting 
the  Church  in  place  of  Christ."  We  must  indeed 
recognize  with  all  sadness  how  the  sins  and 
shortcomings  of  the  Church — in  a  word,  its 
worldliness — have  led  to  this  fear  and  in  great 
measure  justified  it.  But,  as  I  say,  St.  John 
and  St.  Paul  would  hardly  have  understood  it. 
For  what  is  the  Church  but  the  human  fellowship 
in  which,  by  the  Spirit,  Christ  is  found — what 
is  it  but  His  body  ?  And  how  can  you  put  the 
body  in  place  of  the  person  ?  or  how  can  the 
I  fellowship  of  God  be  realized  except  in  the 
I  brotherhood  of  men — the  particular  brotherhood 
which  He  has  appointed  as  its  instrument  ? 

5.  I  cannot  doubt  that  some  of  those  whom 
I  should  most  wish  to  help  to  feel  the  force  of 
St.   John's  witness   will   say,  on  studying  the 


The  word  of  life  63 


opening  words  of  his  Epistle,  that  they  are  not 
ready  for  it — that  its  assumptions  are  too  many 
or  too  great  for  them.  I  would  remind  such 
hesitating  believers  that  St.  John's  witness  is 
the  result  of  a  prolonged  experience,  of  which 
he  is  here  contributing  to  us  the  conclusion. 
The  grounds  of  this  conclusion  are  to  be  found 
in  the  Gospels  taken  together.  It  is  a  question 
for  examination  whether  those  Gospels  do 
really  give  an  authentic  account  of  the 
apostolic  testimony,  and  whether,  if  so,  that 
testimony  can  be  accepted  as  true.  But  the  study 
of  this  Epistle  can  do  much  for  us,  even  before 
we  have  reached  the  solid  ground  of  Christian 
conviction.  It  can  make  us  feel  how  truly  the 
Christian  conviction  is  a  message  of  life,  and 
how  deep  and  enduring  its  answer  is  to  the 
profoundest  needs  and  questionings  of  men. 
And  it  is  in  this  spirit  that  I  would  invite  still 
sceptical  minds  to  the  thoughtful  and,  if  it  may 
be,  prayerful  consideration  of  its  contents. 


§  2.    1  JOHN  i.  5-ii.  6 
GOD   IS    LIGHT 

St.  John's  gospel  of  life  consists  first  of  all  in 
a  message  about  the  nature  of  God.  This  is 
because  what  men  will  become  and  do  depends 
in  the  long  run  upon  what  they  believe  about 
God.  And  St.  John's  solemn  message  is  given, 
not  in  terms  of  a  logical  definition  of  God,  but 
in  a  brilliant  metaphor  such  as  can  fire  our 
imaginations  and  warm  our  hearts.  "  This  is 
the  message  which  we  have  heard  from  Christ, 
and  announce  unto  you,  that  God  is  light,  and 
in  him  is  no  darkness  at  all." 

What  is  this  metaphor  meant  to  convey  ? 
Light  is  recognized  by  all  as  the  source  and 
condition  of  vitality,  joy,  beauty,  security. 
And  the  Bible  is  full  of  the  love  of  light  in  every 
sense.  "  Truly  the  light  is  sweet,  and  a  pleasant 
thing  it  is  for  the  eyes  to  behold  the  sun."  ^  "  If 
a  man  walk  in  the  day,  he  stumbleth  not,  because 
he  seeth  the  light  of  this  world."  *  "  In  thy 
light  shall  we  see  light."'      Thus  to  say  that 

1  Eccl.  xi.  7.  2  joim  ^i,  9.  ^  pg^  xxxvi.  9. 

64 


God  is  light  65 

God  is  pure  unqualified  light  is  to  convey  to 
us  the  idea  that  He  is  ungrudging  goodness,  and 
glorious  beauty,  and  pure  truth,  infinitely  dif- 
fusive, rejoicing  in  the  vigorous  life  and  security 
and  joy  of  His  creatures.  Certainly  darkness  is 
a  very  large  element  of  our  present  human 
experience,  deepening  into  the  darkness  of 
death.  But  it  makes  the  whole  difference  if 
behind  the  darkness  is  light,  and  light  which 
the  darkness  cannot  overcome.  It  makes  the 
whole  difference  if  God,  the  source  and  ground 
of  all  being,  is  pure  light.  Then,  as  St.  James 
puts  it,  "  every  divine  giving  is  good,  and  every 
divine  gift  is  perfect  in  its  origin,  coming  down 
as  it  does  from  the  Father  of  lights,  with  whom 
can  be  no  variation,  or  shadow  due  to  change."  * 
But,  inasmuch  as  St.  John  attributes  this 
message  specially  to  Christ,  we  must  look  closely 
at  His  teaching  about  "  light,''  especially  as  it 
is  given  in  the  Fourth  Gospel.  And  this  requires 
us  to  interpret  the  statement  that  "God  is 
light''  with  reference,  in  the  first  place,  and 
indeed  almost  exclusively,  to  moral  righteousness ; 
and  St.  John,  in  fact,  follows  it  up  immediately 
with  a  statement  of  the  incompatibility  of  any 

1  James  i,  17,  following  Hort, 


\ 


66  St.  Johns  Epistles 


acquiescence  in  moral  evil  with  the  fellowship 
of  God,  which  is  religion.  We  are  so  accustomed, 
at  least  in  theory,  to  the  intimate  and  necessary 
association  of  morality  with  religion  that  we 
are  apt  to  forget  how  much  we  owe  it  to  the 
Bible.  What  may  most  properly  be  called 
"  natural  religion  "  all  the  world  over  is  mainly 
non-moral.  It  is  nature-worship  in  some  form  ; 
and,  as  nature  is  non-moral,  so  is  its  worship. 
And  where  it  is  the  worship  of  the  productive 
and  reproductive  powers  of  nature  it  is  often 
immoral.  Thus  Ephesus,  where  St.  John  wrote, 
was  a  famous  religious  centre.  Its  business  was 
largely  religious.  But  the  worship  of  the  Ephe- 
sian  Artemis — as  the  Greeks  called  the  "  great 
mother  "' — was  wholly  non-moral  and  largely 
immoral.  Natural  religion  then  consists  gener- 
ally in  religious  observances,  rites  and  taboos, 
which  are  wholly  divorced  from  any  considera- 
tion of  character.  But  in  marked  contrast  to 
all  this,  the  central  doctrine  of  the  Old  Testament 
is  the  essential  holiness  of  character  in  God, 
and  the  uselessness  of  all  rites  or  ceremonies 
apart  from  character.  This  is  the  constant 
theme  of  the  prophets.  It  is  needless  to 
quote.      And   the  meaning  of  the  moral  claim 


God  is  light  67 

of  God  is  infinitely  deepened  and  intensified  by 
our  Lord. 

True  religion,  then,  is  utterly  incompatible 
with  "  the  works  of  darkness."  What  is  the 
meaning  of  this  phrase  and  all  the  phrases  which 
identify  darkness  and  moral  evil,  such  as  recur 
in  this  Epistle  ?  We  may  express  it,  perhaps, 
in  this  way.  All  decent  human  society  involves 
some  public  standard  of  required  goodness. 
This  constitutes  the  moral  light  of  the  society. 
The  rebels  against  this  are  the  men  who  love  the 
darkness,  first  of  all  because  it  enables  them  to 
escape  detection.  "  They  are  of  those  that  rebel 
against  the  light ;  they  know  not  the  ways  thereof, 
nor  abide  in  the  paths  thereof.  The  murderer 
rising  when  there  is  no  light  killeth  the  poor 
and  needy ;  and  in  the  night  is  as  a  thief.  The 
eye  also  of  the  adulterer  waiteth  for  the  twilight, 
saying.  No  eye  shall  see  me  :  and  disguiseth  his 
face.  In  the  dark  they  dig  through  houses, 
which  they  had  marked  for  themselves  in  the 
daytime  :  they  know  not  the  light.  For  the 
morning  is  to  them  even  as  the  shadow  of  death  ; 
if  one  know  them,  they  are  in  the  terrors  of  the 
shadow  of  death.''  ^    This  gives  one  the  primary 

1  Job  xxiv,  13-17, 

6 


68  >S^.  John's  Efistles 

physical  meaning  of  "  tlie  works  of  darkness." 
They  are  done  in  the  dark  to  escape  detection. 
They  are  disreputable  actions.  But  a  man 
may  be  living  a  perfectly  respectable  life  and 
still  be  living  in  "  the  darkness  "  and  doing 
"  the  works  of  darkness/'  This  is  partly  because 
"  God  seeth  the  heart/'  and  requires  purity  of 
heart  as  well  as  outward  conformity  of  conduct ; 
partly  because  the  standard  of  respectability — 
the  traditional  moral  requirement  made  by 
society — may  be  itself  defective.  Like  the 
Pharisees,  men  may  "  make  the  commandment 
of  God  of  none  effect  by  their  traditions."  Thus 
Christ  came  to  penetrate  all  hypocrisy,  conscious 
or  unconscious,  and  all  conventional  morality 
with  the  searchlight  of  perfect  goodness.  He 
is  *'  the  light  of  the  world."  And  the  light 
condemns  the  darkness  of  conventional  respect- 
ability as  much  as  the  darkness  of  disreputable 
sins.  No  one  can  study  our  Lord's  moral  teach- 
ing without  acknowledging,  what  so-called  Chris- 
tian society  constantly  ignores,  that  such  vulgar 
sins  as  fornication  or  drunkenness  or  violence 
are  in  no  way  worse  in  His  sight  than  avarice 
or  pride  or  uncharitableness.  The  latter  belong 
to    "  the   darkness "    as   fully   as   the   former 


God  is  light  69 

Thus  it  is  quite  generally  in  view  of  sin  of  all 
kinds  that  St.  John  says  "This  is  the  judgement, 
that  the  light  is  come  into  the  world,  and  men 
loved  the  darkness  rather  than  the  light ;  for  their 
works  were  evil.  For  every  one  that  doeth  ill 
hateth  the  light,  and  cometh  not  to  the  light, 
lest  his  works  should  be  reproved.  But  he 
that  doeth  the  truth  cometh  to  the  light,  that 
his  works  may  be  made  manifest,  that  they 
have  been  wrought  in  God."  ^ 

This,  then,  is  St.  John's  primary  announce- 
ment. God  is  absolute  moral  goodness  without 
qualification.  "  God  is  light  and  in  him  is  no 
darkness  at  all."  Fellowship  with  Him,  which 
is  religion,  requires  in  us  unqualified  agreement 
in  heart  and  conscience,  as  well  as  in  outward 
conduct,  with  His  character.  To  profess  re- 
ligion while  living  in  sin — whether  sin  of  outward 
conduct  or  of  the  heart — is  to  practise  a  lie  and 
not  to  be  living  the  truth.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  we  bring  our  whole  life  into  the  light  of  God, 
inwardly  and  outwardly,  as  Christ  is  in  the 
light,  not  only  do  we  have  fellowship  with  God, 
but  with  one  another  also.    For  the  obstacle 

^  John  iii.  19-21.      This  passage  appears   to   belong   not   to 
our  Lord's  own  words,  but  to  the  evangelist's  comment. 


70  St.  John's  Epistles 

to  human  fellowship  is  that  men's  secret  lives, 
their  real  ambitions  and  desires  and  thoughts  of 
one  another,  are  selfish  and  evil — that  is,  they 
are  antisocial.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be 
really  right  with  God  is  also  to  be  a  good  comrade 
man-wards.  Then  the  obstacles  to  real  fellow- 
ship are  gone.  And  if  we  are  not  sinless,  yet 
we  have  the  secret  of  redemption  from  sin.  For 
wherever  such  real  fellowship  is  established 
in  Christ,  there  His  blood — that  is,  His  human 
life  offered  in  sacrifice  for  man  and  by  His  Spirit 
communicated  to  men  for  their  inward  renewal — 
cleanses  them  from  all  sin. 

Here,  then,  there  confronts  us  the  need  fully 
to  recognize  the  fact  of  sin  in  ourselves.  For 
we  cannot  come  into  the  light  of  God  without 
becoming  immediately  conscious  of  sin. 


"  I  thought  I  could  not  breathe  ui  that  tine  air, 
That  pure  severity  of  perfect  light." 


This  had  been  Isaiah's  message  as  he  contem- 
plated the  coming  of  God  to  Zion.  "Sinners 
in  Sion  are  afraid  ;  trembling  hath  surprised 
the  godless  ones.  Who  among  us  shall  dwell 
with  the  devouring  fire  ?    who  among  us  shall 


God  is  light  71 

dwell  with  everlasting  burnings  ?  "  ^  This  de- 
vouring fire,  these  everlasting  burnings,  are 
nothing  else  than  God's  holiness  and  goodness 
as  it  presents  itself  to  the  "  godless  ones/'  And 
it  is  not  only  the  godless  ones,  as  Isaiah  had 
found  in  his  own  case,  who  feel  this.  "  Woe  is 
me  !  ''  he  had  been  constrained  to  cry  in  the 
awful  presence  of  God,  ''for  I  am  undone  ; 
because  I  aim  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I  dwell 
in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean  lips  :  for 
mine  eyes  have  seen  the  King,  the  Lord  of 
hosts."  ^  The  better  a  man  is  the  more  he  feels 
the  awfulness  of  God.  Thus  St.  John  goes  on' 
to  tell  us  that  if  any  man  does  not  confess  to 
personal  sinfulness,  he  is  self-deceived  and  a 
liar.  Confession  of  sin  inevitably  follows  upon 
any  sincere  attempt  to  bring  ourselves  and  our 
deeds  into  the  light  of  truth.  But  the  confession 
must  be  real.  No  vague  confession  is  enough. 
It  must  be  confession  of  our  sins  in  detail  and 
particular,  without  any  manner  of  palliation 
or  self-excusing.  And  so  great  is  the  value  of 
frank  confession,  because  it  is  a  willing  coming 
into  the  light,  that  God  shows  His  truth  to  His 
own  promises  and  His  real  righteousness  in  no 

^  Is.  xxxiii.  14.  2  vi,  5 


72  St.  John's  Epistles 

)  way  more  tlian  this,  that  He  meets  our  mere 
confession  with  forgiveness — waiting  for  nothing 
else — and  cleanses  us  from  all  unrighteousness. 
We  stand  free  to  serve  Him  without  the  guilt 
or  disability  of  the  past.  But  he  has  declared 
us  to  be  sinners,  and  confession — that  is,  practical 
assent  to  this  divine  charge  against  us — is  abso- 
lutely necessary.  To  deny  that  we  have  sinned — 
to  attribute  our  shortcomings  to  any  other 
cause,  such  as  our  nature  or  our  circumstances — 
is,  in  effect,  to  make  God  a  liar  and  show  that 
His  word  has  no  place  in  us. 

The  object  of  this  stern  reminder  which 
St.  John  presses  upon  us  is  twofold.  It  is  both 
(^  that  we  should  cease  to  sin,. and  also  tKat,  when 
we  fail  and  commit  sin,  he  should  know  where 
the  remedy  lies.  For  we  cannot  redeem  our- 
selves from  sin.  But  we  are  not  alone  as  mere 
individuals  guilty  before  God.  We  have  one 
at  hand  to  speak  to  the  Father  for  us — Jesus 
Christ,  who,  man  like  us,  is  perfectly  righteous, 
free  from  all  taint  of  sin  ;  and  it  is  to  Him  we 
belong.  He,  then,  is  the  propitiation  for  our 
sins.  In  Him — by  His  mediation — we  are  set 
free  from  our  sins  to  begin  again.  And  He  is 
the  propitiation  not  for  us  only,  not  merely  for 


God  is  light  73 

any  class  among  men,  but  for  the  whole  world. 
In  Him  all  alike  can  find  the  same  forgiveness 
and  the  same  freedom. 

But  to  be  thus  dealt  with  for  Christ's  sake — • 
to  be  able  thus  to  feel  the  assurance  of  His 
advocacy — we  must  belong  to  Him.  We  must 
know  Him.  It  is  no  mechanical  process.  _How, 
then,  are  we  to  ''  know  that  we  know  him  "  ? 
There  is  only  one  ground  of  assurance — it  is 
the  way  of  obedience  to  His  commandments. 
To  profess  to  belong  to  Him  or  to  know  Him 
without  a  life  of  actual  obedience  is  to  show 
ourselves  liars  who  are  alien  to  the  truth.  But 
in  the  obedience  to  His  word  or  teaching  is  the 
fulfilment  in  us  of  the  love  of  God.  This  is 
actually  to  abide  in  Christ — to  share  His  life 
and  to  know  that  we  share  it.  And  no  one  can 
claim  to  share  His  life  who  does  not  actually 
live  among  men  as  He  lived. 

And  tliis  is  the  message  wliicli  we  have  heard  from  him, 
and  announce  unto  you,  that  Grod  is  light,  and  in  him  is  no 
darkness  at  all.  If  we  say  that  we  have  fellowship  with 
him,  and  walk  in  the  darkness,  we  lie,  and  do  not  the  truth  ^  : 
but  if  we  walk  in  the  light,  as  he  is  in  the  light,  we  have 
fellowship  one  with  another,  and  the  blood  of  Jesus  his 
Bon  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin.     If  we  say  that  we  have  no 

1  cf.  St.  John  i.  4-9,  iii.  19-21,  viii.  12,  xii.  35-6. 


74  St.  John's  Epistles 

sin,  we  deceive  ourselves,  and  the  truth  is  not  in  us.  If 
we  confess  our  sins,  he  is  faithful  and  righteous  to  forgive 
us  our  sins,  and  to  cleanse  us  from  all  unrighteousness. 
If  we  say  that  we  have  not  sinned,  we  make  him  a  liar, 
and  his  word  is  not  in  us. 

My  little  children,  these  things  write  I  unto  you,  that  ye 
may  not  sin.  And  if  any  man  sin,  we  have  an  Advocate 
with  the  Father,  Jesus  Christ  the  righteous  :  and  he  is  the 
propitiation  for  our  sins  ;  and  not  for  ours  only,  but  also 
for  the  whole  world.  And  hereby  know  we  that  we  know 
him,  if  we  keep  his  commandments.  He  that  saith,  I  know 
him,  and  keepeth  not  his  commandments,  is  a  liar,  and  the 
truth  is  not  in  him  :  but  whoso  keepeth  his  word,  in  him 
verily  hath  the  love  of  Grod  been  perfected.  Hereby  know 
we  that  we  are  in  him  :  he  that  saith  he  abideth  in  him 
ought  himself  also  to  walk  even  as  he  walked. 

1.  There  are  very  few  passages  in  the  whole 
of  literature  which  are  at  once  so  simple  and  so 
profound  as  the  passage  which  we  have  just 
read.  It  will  be  seen  to  traverse  and  correct 
with  profound  conviction  and  solemn  authority 
a  number  of  assumptions  which  are  current  in 
our  world  to-day.  Thus,  first,  by  beginning  his 
account  of  the  Gospel  of  life  with  a  declaration 
about  the  nature  of  God,  St.  John  would  remind 
us  that  the  only  root  of  a  really  Christian  life 
in  an  individual  or  a  really  Christian  organization 
of  society  is  to  think  rightly  about  God.  Our 
Lord  spent  His  pains  as  a  teacher  on  nothing 


God  is  light  75 

so  mucli  as  in  giving  men,  or  helping  them  to 
gain,  right  ideas  about  God.  This  is  "  to  love 
the  Lord  our  God  with  all  our  mind/'  This  is 
to  avoid  idolatry,  which  is,  at  the  root,  enter- 
taining false  ideas  of  God.  And  is  there  any- 
thing more  lacking  in  present-day  religion  than 
a  clear  and  living  conception  of  God  ? 

Secondly,  St.  John  takes  it  for  granted  that 
there  will  be  no  such  ass'urance  as  we  need  about 
the  nature  of  God  except  by  God's  own  definite 
self -disclosure.  Such  a  message  from  God  about 
His  own  nature  and  character  was  delivered 
by  the  old  prophets  of  Israel.  But  St.  John's 
attention  is  concentrated  upon  the  last  and 
fullest  form  of  the  message — that  delivered  by 
Jesus  Christ.  This,  as  it  is  given  in  parables 
and  plain  sajdngs,  and  as  it  is  expressed  in  His 
own  character,  is  vivid  and  plain  enough.  It 
wins  us  by  its  manifold  expression  of  self- 
sacrificing  love,  by  its  assurance  of  the  infinite 
value  which  God  sets  on  every  single  human 
soul,  by  its  free  offer  of  forgiveness  and  welcome. 
None  the  less  the  Gospels  are  severe  books.  The 
moral  claim  of  God  upon  the  soul  of  man  and 
not  less  upon  society,  His  inexorable  right- 
eousness.   His    tremendous    judgements — these 


76  St.  Johns  Epistles 

make  it  impossible  for  any  real  disciple  in  the 
school  of  Jesus  Christ  to  lapse  into  the  free-and- 
easy  conception  of  a  "  good-natured  "  God  who 
must  somehow  make  it  all  right  for  every  one 
at  last,  with  which  we  are  to-day  obsessed.  This, 
then,  is  surely  the  question  of  questions  for  us. 
Do  we  really  believe  that  what  was  and  is  in- 
accessible by  human  philosophy  has  been  really 
given  by  divine  self- disclosure  and  in  full  and 
final  form  through  the  lips  and  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  Christ  ?  Certainly  He  claimed  to  tell 
us  about  His  Father  with  infallible  authority. 
"  No  man  knoweth  the  Father  save  the  Son, 
and  he  to  whomsoever  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal 
him."  This  is  no  isolated  text,  but  the  spirit 
of  His  whole  teaching  about  God.  Can  we 
stand  face  to  face  with  Him  and  repudiate  His 
claim  ?  But  if  not,  is  there  not  a  formidable 
reconstruction  of  our  whole  way  of  living  and 
thinking  required  in  most  of  those  who  call 
themselves  Christians  and  in  our  whole  social 
life  ?  What  we  need  truly  is  not  to  argue  about 
Christianity,  but  honestly  to  try  it. 

Thirdly,  St.  John  perceives  that  the  disclosure 
of  God  was  given,  as  it  was  needed,  in  forms 
intelligible  to  the  common  man.    So  it  is  in  the 


God  is  light  77 

parables  and  in  the  plain  teaching  of  Jesus. 
So  it  is  in  the  human  character  of  Jesus  in  whom 
we  are  to  see  the  Father.  So  it  is  in  the  three 
solemn  expressions  of  the  essence  of  God  which 
we  owe  to  St.  John — the  first  (which  he  ascribes 
to  Jesus  Himself)  "God  is  a  spirit"  in  such 
sense  as  not  to  admit  of  the  thought  of  His 
being  worshipped  in  one  place  rather  than  in 
another,  or  of  His  being  satisfied  with  any- 
external  forms  of  worship  ;  and  the  two  others 
which  he  gives  in  this  Epistle,  "_Go_d_is  lov.e-'' 
and  "  God  is  light."  These  are  not  intellectual 
definitions,  but  great  thoughts  of  God  which 
appeal  to  our  heart  and  imagination  and  which 
stimulate  our  affections  and  our  conscience.  It 
is  quite  right  that  the  theologians  and  philo- 
sophers should  have  used  all  the  powers  of  the 
human  intellect  upon  the  idea  of  God.  But 
if  it  be  the  case  that  the  most  trustworthy  and 
complete  material  upon  which  they  have  to  work 
is  the  revelation  of  the  Father  given  by  His 
prophets  and  His  Son  Jesus  Christ,  it  can  hardly 
be  denied  that  in  translating  the  picture  into 
intellectual  forms  they  have  too  often  obscured 
it.  But  the  account  of  God  given  in  the  prophets 
and  of  "  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ " 


78  St.  John's  Epistles 

in  tlie  Gospels  is  as  lucid  and  attractive  as  it 
is  tremendous. 

2.  "  God  is  light,  and  darkness  in  Him  there 
is  not  any  at  all."  We  naturally  give  to  the 
metaphor  of  light  and  enlightenment  an  in- 
tellectual meaning.  This  is  quite  legitimate. 
We  must  thankfully  acknowledge  that  we  cannot 
find  in  the  Bible  the  least  trace  of  obscurantism ; 
and  we  can  discern  in  the  idea  of  wisdom,  divine 
and  human,  in  our  Lord's  broad  outlook  on  man 
and  nature,  as  it  appears  in  the  parables,  and 
in  St.  Paul's  conception  of  the  divine  order  and 
system  of  the  world,  an  encouragement  to  philo- 
sophy and  science.  But,  on  the  whole,  the 
New  Testament  conception  of  the  divine  light 
and  of  human  enlightenment — both  in  our 
Lord's  teaching  and  in  St.  Paul,  St.  Peter, 
St.  James,  and  St.  John^ — is  markedly  ethical. 
This  has  been  already  pointed  out.  Here 
St.  John's  bold  assertion  of  the  unqualified 
goodness  of  God  under  the  figure  of  light  is 
such  as  to  attract  and  delight.  But  he  insists 
upon  it  not  as  delightful,  but  as  serious  in  its 
pioral  consequences.  We  must  be  fit  to  live 
in  the  unqualified  light.    And  this  brings  him 

1  See  esp.  Eph.  v.  8-14  ;  1  Pet.  ii.  9  ;  James  i.  17-18. 


God  is  light  79 

at  once  to  tlie  fact  of  sin.  He  condemns  three 
attitudes  towards  sin — the  sort  of  moral  in- 
difference which  amounts  to  the  denial  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  sin  or  that  it  excludes  from 
the  fellowship  of  God  (ver.  6);  the  denial  of 
sin  as  a  fact  in  ourselves  which  is  simply  self- 
deception  (ver.  8) ;  and  the  denial  of  particular 
sins  by  which  we  make  God  a  liar,  because  in 
all  His  dealings  with  man,  and  all  men  individu- 
ally. He  has  treated  them  as  sinners  needing 
redemption. 

3.  And  this  leads  him  to  emphasize  the 
value  of  confession.  There  can  indeed  be  no 
doubt  about  the  value  assigned  to  it  both  in 
the  Old  and  in  the  New  Testaments.  "  I  said, 
I  will  confess  my  sins  unto  the  Lord,  and  so 
thou  forgavest  the  wickedness  of  my  sin." 
"  And  David  said  unto  Nathan,  I  have  sinned 
against  the  Lord.  And  Nathan  said  unto 
David,  The  Lord  also  hath  put  away  thy  sin." 
At  first  sight  it  might  be  supposed  that  con- 
fession— mere  frank  acknowledgement — was  a 
very  easy  thing  and  only  a  short  step  towards 
reformation.  But,  in  fact,  our  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  including  our  own,  teaches  us 
better.    Many  men  live  in  a  state   of  moral 


80  St.  John's  Efistles 

indifference.  Many  deplore  their  sins,  but  at- 
tribute them  to  circumstances  or  nature  or 
heredity,  or  are  content  with  being  "  not  worse 
than  other  people."  Many,  again,  *'  deceive 
themselves  "  as  to  their  motives  and  actions. 
It  is,  in  fact,  quite  rare  to  find  a  person  who 
wholeheartedly  desires  to  know  the  naked  truth 
about  himself.  But  this  is  the  essence  of  a  good 
confession.  It  is  to  bring  ourselves  without 
reserve  into  the  light.  It  is  to  put  away  all 
self-excusing  and  all  comparison  of  ourselves 
with  others.  It  is  to  face  the  terrible  truth 
naked  before  God.  And  as  St.  John  implies, 
while  self-deception  leads  to  a  general  denial 
of  sm,  a  good  confession  must  be  a  confession 
of  sins  -  that  is,  of  the  particular  acts  of  sin  in 
thought  and  word  and  deed.  It  is  to  say,  "  I  have 
sinned  by  my  fault,  by  my  own  fault,  by  my 
own  grievous  fault,  and  in  such  and  such  ways.'' 
This  is  why  a  good  confession  is  so  great  a  thing 
and  brings  so  rich  a  blessing. 

4.  Does  St.  John  contemplate  confession  to 
God  only  ?  Dr.  Westcott  denies  this.  "  Confess 
our  sins,"  he  writes  in  his  commentary  on  this 
place,  "  not  only  acknowledge  them,  but 
acknowledge  them  openly  in  the  face  of  men." 


God  is  light  81 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Greek  word,  and  its 
compound,  wherever  used  in  the  New  Testament, 
means  open  acknowledgement  before  men ;  but 
the  Hebrew  word  for  "  confess ''  does  not 
always  bear  this  meaning — not  in  "  I  said,  I  will 
confess  my  transgressions  unto  the  Lord "  ^ 
(Ps.  xxxii.  5),  nor  in  "  Confessing  my  sin  and  the 
sin  of  my  people  "  (Dan.  ix.  4  and  20) ;  and  I 
do  not  feel  satisfied  that  the  word  used  by 
St.  John  need  mean  more  than  confession  to 
God.  Nevertheless,  the  probability  is,  if  we 
consider  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  word  he 
uses,  that  he  was  thinking  of  confession  to  man 
also,  as  in  the  cases  of  Achan,  of  those  who 
came  to  John's  baptism,  and  of  those  who 
confessed  to  sorcery  at  Ephesus.^ 

Confession  to  "  the  brethren  "  as  well  as  to 
God  was  the  practice  of  the  first  Christians. 
Thus  from  the  first  notorious  and  scandalous 
sinners  who  were  put  to  open  penance,  as  in 
St.  Paul's  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  must 
acknowledge  their  sin  openly  before  they  could 
be  readmitted  to  the  fellowship.  And  apart 
from  such  scandalous  sins,  St.  James  exhorts 

^  Where,  however,  a  different  word  is  used  in  the  Greek  Bible. 
2  See  Josh,  vii.  19-20  ;  Matt.  iii.  6  ;  Acts  xix,  18. 


82  St.  John's  Efutles 

all  Christians  to  "  confess  their  sins  one  to 
another  '' — their  sins  of  all  kinds,  and  not  merely 
their  "  faults "  against  one  another.  And  in 
an  early  document,  the  Didache,  we  learn  that 
mutual  confession  of  sins  before  the  Eucharist 
was  the  practice  of  the  Church,  "  Having  first 
confessed  your  sins,  that  your  sacrifice  may  be 
pure."  Moreover,  it  must  be  acknowledged 
that  the  divine  commission  given  to  the  apostles, 
and  so  to  the  Church,  to  absolve  and  retain 
sins  only  admits  of  special  application  to  the 
individual  Christian  where  the  sins  to  be  judged 
are  known  to  the  Church  or  its  ministers.  It 
is  on  this  primitive  practice  of  requiring  the 
confession  of  scandalous  sins  in  the  congrega- 
tion, and  encouraging  the  confession  of  sins 
generally,  and  on  the  divine  grant  of  absolving 
and  retaining  authority  to  the  Church,  that  the 
penitential  discipline  of  the  Church,  which  has 
varied  greatly  in  different  times  and  places,  was 
built  up. 

With  us,  in  our  part  of  the  Church,  there  is 
no  ecclesiastical  requirement  under  ordinary 
circumstances  of  that  confession  to  a  priest 
which  took  the  place  in  the  Church  of  public 
confession  to  the  congregation.    But  it  must 


God  is  light  83 

be  acknowledged  that,  quite  apart  from  the 
question  of  any  ecclesiastical  requirement,  we 
Englishmen  forget  the  sense  in  which  no  con- 
fession to  God  can  be  real  unless  it  at  least 
includes  a  willingness  that  our  sins  should  be 
known  to  men.  Many  a  person,  including  many 
who  frequent  the  confessional,  would  be  furious 
if  one  of  their  fellow-men  were  to  impute  to 
them  the  very  sins  they  had  confessed  to  God. 
But  this  is  hypocrisy.  All  honest  confessions 
to  God  must  exclude  any  desire  to  bear  a  re- 
putation among  men  which  is  better  than  we 
deserve.  We  must  want  to  be  known  just  for 
what  we  are,  as  we  shall  be  known  at  the  Great 
Day  of  disclosure.  And  if  social  considerations 
make  it  undesirable  to  make  public  confession 
of  our  sins,  yet  where  we  have  wronged  an 
individual  we  should  frankly  confess  it  to  him. 
If  I  have  told  some  one  a  lie  of  any  importance, 
by  far  the  best  remedy  against  repeating  such 
an  offence  is  frankly  to  confess  it  to  him ;  and 
there  are  innumerable  alienations  (for  instance) 
between  husband  and  wife  which  would  be 
healed  if  the  first  offence  were  franlcly  acknow- 
ledged. '*  I  am  very  sorry.  I  hope  I  shall  not 
do  it  again.''  And  beyond  this,  I  am  sure 
7 


84  St.  John's  Efistles 

that  we  greatly  need  to  remember  St.  James's 
general  admonition  "  Confess  your  sins  one 
to  another." 

5.  The  divine  gifts  of  forgiveness  and  cleansing 
wait  on  our  confession  (ver.  9),  and  herein  the 
divine  righteousness,  no  less  than  God's  faithful- 
ness to  His  promise,  is  shown.  Forgiveness  has 
been  greatly  misunderstood.  It  is  not  the 
remission  of  punishment — the  natural  conse- 
quences of  our  ojSences.  It  is  the  greatest 
mistake  to  identify  forgiveness  with  being  "  let 
ofi.''  One  who  knows  his  guilt  and  has  been 
forgiven  will  always  be  ready  to  be  punished. 
And  in  the  99th  psalm  the  record  of  God's  deal- 
ings with  His  saints  is  "  Heard — forgiven — 
punished."  ^  But  to  be  forgiven  is  to  be  set 
free  from  bondage  to  our  past.  It  is  to  be 
granted  (and  that  over  and  over  again)  a  fresh 
start.  "  I  will  run  the  way  of  thy  command- 
ments, when  thou  hast  set  my  heart  at 
liberty."  And  the  condition  of  all  forgiveness" 
is  the  steady  will  of  obedience  in  the  future. 
This  is  what  St.  John  proceeds  to  emphasize  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  paragraph  that  we  are 
studying.    It  is   most   noticeable   that  in   the 

^  Ps,  xcix,  8. 


God  is  light  85 

parable  of  the  unthankful  servant,  the  remission 
of  debt  which  is  granted  by  the  king  uncon- 
ditionally is  found  to  be  utterly  reversed  as  soon 
as  it  is  plain  that  the  servant  was  showing  no 
disposition  to  imitate  his  lord/  Absolution  is 
nothing  but  the  being  set  free  to  go  forward  in 
the  service  of  the  Lord.  It  cleanses  our  con- 
sciences only  in  order  that  we  may  "  serve  the  j 
living  God." ' 

6.  We  should  be  profoundly  grateful  to  St. 
John  for  telling  us  so  clearly  that  if  we  are 
really  right  with  God,  if  we  "  walk  in  the  light/' 
we  shall  be  also  right  with  men.  All  social 
alienation,  all  class  divisions,  all  personal 
quarrels,  are  due  to  men  "  walking  in  darkness,'' 
living  a  life  either  of  pride  or  selfishness  or  lust. 
Real  fellowship  with  God  will  remove  all  these 
causes  of  social  alienation.  And  conversely 
the  causes  of  social  alienation  will  never  be 
removed  by  even  the  best  economic  changes 
unless  there  is  also  the  change  of  heart  towards 
God. 

7.  The  removal  of  sin  is  the  work  of  Christ 
for  us  and  in  us.  St.  John  would  emphasize 
as  much  as  St.  Paul  our  absolute  dependence 

1  Matt,  xviii.  22  £f.  2  Heb.  ix.  14. 


86  St.  John's  Epistles 

for  our  redemption  upon  Another  ;  and  though, 
in  his  Gospel,  St.  John  only  indicates  •  without 
emphasizing  the  function  of  atonement  or  pro- 
pitiation, yet  in  his  Epistle  he  makes  it  evident 
that,  like  St.  Paul,  he  would  emphasize  equally 
both  aspects  of  Christ's  work,  propitiation 
and  renewal — His  work  for  us  and  His  work 
in  us. 

When  St.  John  speaks  of  "  the  blood  of  Jesus  " 
as  "  cleansing  us  from  all  sin,''  we  are  bound 
to  think  of  his  Gospel — of  the  blood  wherein  we 
drinlc  eternal  life,  and  which  is  "  spirit  and  life  " 
(vi.  52-63).     The  root  idea  of  sacrificial  blood 

i  is  that  the  life  of  the  victim  is  in  it^  :  thus  it 
is  the  sacrificed  life  of  Christ,  as  communicated 

'  to  us  by  His  Spirit,  which  is  to  renew  us  inwardly, 
in  the  fellowship  of  His  manhood,  into  eternal 

-  life.  This  is  the  teaching  of  the  6th  chapter 
of  his  Gospel,  taken  with  the  figure  of  the  vine 
(c.  XV.)  and  the  accompanying  teaching  about  the 
Holy  Spirit.  And  it  is  St.  Paul's  doctrine  as  well 
as  St.  John's.  Herein,  moreover,  is  the  meaning 
of  the  Holy  Communion.  But  there  is  some- 
thing  to  precede   this   communication   of  life. 

1  See  John  i,  29,  iii.  14,  xi.  49-51. 

2  Levit,  xvii.  11, 


God  is  light  87 

That  is  the  restoration  of  our  standing-ground 
before  God — it  is  propitiation.  Of  the  nioral 
necessity  for  propitiation  St.  Paul  gives  us  some 
explanation.'  St.  John  simply  assumes  it. 
We  cannot  appear  before  God  in  our  bare  selves. 
Our  sinfulness  precludes  this.  But  Another 
has  acted  for  us.  He  is  our  brother  man,  but 
sinless.  He  has  offered  the  perfect  sacrifice  of 
a  humanity  in  which  God  is  perfectly  well  pleased. 
He  is  our  propitiation ;  we  ask  God  to  look  at 
Him,  not  at  us.  He  is  our  advocate  ;  we  ask 
God  to  listen  to  Him,  not  to  us.  But  we  can 
only  ask  God  to  do  this  because  we  belong  to  Him. 
In  a  sense  all  men  belong  to  Him.  He  stands 
for  humanity  everyivhere,  "  the  whole  world." 
But  our  power  to  claim  His  advocacy  and  plead 
His  propitiation  depends  on  our  belonging  to 
Him.  This  is  the  privilege  conveyed  in  our 
baptism,  which  is  the  instrument  of  our  new 
birth.*  But  St.  John  is  not  here  thinking  of  this. 
Baptism  is  quite  ineffective  morally  without 
moral  identification,  without  the  will  to  obey, 
and  that  is  what  he  emphasizes.  Wholly 
without  any  merit  of  ours,  and  that  again  and 
again,  we  can  accept  of  God's  free  gift  of  for- 

1  Rom.  iii.  25-6.  2  joim  iii.  5. 


88  St.  John's  Epistles 

giveness  in  the  name  and  by  tlie  merit  of  Christ, 
but  this  only  if  we  belong  to  Him  or  "  know 
Him/'  and  to  know  Him  means  that  we  are 
of  His  company  and  keep  His  commandments 
and  walk  even  as  He  walked — if  not  faultlessly, 
at  least  in  will  and  intention. 

Truly  I   believe  there  would  have  been  no 
difficulty  about  the  Christian  doctrine  of  Christ's 
propitiation  for  us,  appealing  as  it  does  to  all 
the  deepest  needs  of  men,  but  for  three  most 
unfortunate  mistakes  :    (1)    that  absolution  has 
been  confused  with  being  let  of!  punishment, 
whereas   it  means  our  being  set  free  to  serve  : 
and  there  is,  in  fact,  no  absolution  for  those  whose 
will  is  not  set  to  serve ;    (2)    that  Christ's  workT 
for  us  (propitiation)  has  been  separated  from  I    ^ 
His  work  in  us  (spiritual  renewal),  to  which,  i   'J. 
in  fact,  it  is  only  the  prelude,  as  is  represented  J 
by  St.   Paul  and  St.  John  ;  (3)  that,  contrary 
to    all   the   teachings   of   the   New  Testament, 
the    mind    of    Christ    has    been    distinguished 
from  the  mind  of  the  Father  as  mercy  from 
justice.    . 

In  the  Gospel  we  notice  that  only  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  called  the  Paraclete  or  Advocate,  yet 
in  calling  Him  "  another  Advocate  "  our  Lord 


God  is  light  89 

implies  that  tliat  office  is  also  His/  and  speaks 
of  the  exercise  of  it.^ 

8.  The  antithesis  of  light  and  darkness,   as 
symbolical  of  evil  and  good,  which  is  found  in 
the  New  Testament,  is  not  by  any  means  peculiar 
to   Christianity.    In   its   Persian   form   it   was 
already  recognized  and    known  in  the  empire 
at  any  rate    some  twenty  years  after  St.  John 
wrote  ;  for  the  Gnostic  leader  Basileides  speaks 
of   those   who   declared   that   there   were   two 
original    self- existent   principles    of    all    things, 
light  and  darkness.    And  in  the  form  of  such 
dualism  it  has  played  a  great  part  in  the  thoughts 
of  men.    But  when  St.  John  proclaims  God  as 
pure  light,  he  means  that  there  is  no  rival  G  od— 
no  original  or  self-existent  darkness — and  that 
all  the  darkness  in  which  the  world  lies  is  due 
to  nothing  else  than  either  to  the  rebel  wills 
of  created  spirits,  or,  we  should  add,  to  the  law, 
which  is  God's  law  for  His  world,  that  progress 
is  only  to  be  obtained  gradually  and  through 
effort    and    struggle.     A    certain    "  darkness " 
belongs  to  undeveloped  nature  as  well  as  to 
violated   nature.     It   is   profoundly   character- 
istic of  Christianity  to  deny  either  that  there  is 

1  John  xiv.  16.  xiv.  13-15. 


90  St.  John's  Efistles 

any  original  evil  principle  in  the  world  or  any 
j  fundamentally   evil   substance.     Evil   lies   only 

in  tlie  misuse  of  good  things.  And  however 
'  evil  a  thing  may  be  in  its  misuse,  let  it  once  be 

brought  out  into  the  light  and  revealed  as  it  is 

and  it  becomes  light-giving — as  St.  Paul  says, 
'^  *'  Whatsoever  is  made  manifest  is  light." 


§  3.     1  JOHN  ii.  7-17 
THE   LAW   OF   LOVE 

We  have  been  given  clearly  to  understand  that 
**  to  keep  the  word  "  or  "  the  commandments  " 
of  Jesus  and  to  walk  as  He  walked  is  the  only- 
test  of  really  "  knowing  "  Him  ;  Jesus  is  '*  the 
way,"  and  we  are  to  examine  His  manner  of 
"  walking,"  and  so  ourselves  to  find  it. 

But  there  is  one  pre-eminent  commandment 
of  Jesus  and  one  supremely  memorable  word — 
commended  in  the  fullest  sense  by  His  example — 
"  A  new  commandment  I  give  unto  you,  that 
ye  love  one  another ;  as  I  have  loved  you,  that 
ye  also  love  one  another.  By  this  shall  all 
men  know  that  ye  are  my  disciples,  if  ye  have 
love  one  to  another  "  (John  xiii.  34-5).  "  If  ye 
keep  my  commandments,  ye  shall  abide  in  my 
love  ;  even  as  I  have  kept  My  Father's  command- 
ments, and  abide  in  His  love.  .  .  .  This  is  my 
commandment,  that  ye  love  one  another,  even 
as  I  have  loved  you.  Greater  love  hath  no  man 
than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his 
friends.    Ye  are  my  friends,  if  ye  do  the  things 

91 


92  St.  John's  Epistles 

which  I  command  you  "  (John  xv.  10-15).  This 
commandment  of  mutual  love  was  no  longer, 
when  St.  John  wrote  his  Epistle,  a  new  com- 
mandment. It  was  already  old — something 
heard  and  received  and  held  from  the  very 
beginning.  And  it  is  more  than  a  commandment 
given  in  words  and  received  by  the  ear.  It  has 
been  an  experienced  reality  in  Christ  who  gave 
His  life  for  them  and  also  among  themselves. 
This  is  what  St.  John  means  by  saying  it  is 
**  true  in  him  and  in  you."  Nevertheless,  John 
can  repeat  Christ's  word  and  call  it  "  again  a 
new  commandment,"  because  they  are  standing 
at  the  dawn  of  a  new  day.  The  old  dark 
night,  alike  of  Jewish  exclusiveness  and  heathen 
depravity,  is  passing  away,  and  in  the  new 
catholic  fellowship  of  the  Church  the  genuine 
light  of  the  world  has  begun  to  shine.  In  this 
new  world  of  light  the  old  commandment  of 
mutual  love  becomes  a  new  commandment, 
demanding  a  new  application.  And  it  is  per- 
emptory. To  claim  to  belong  to  the  new  world 
of  light  is  an  idle  boast  if  a  man  hate  one  who  is 
his  brother  in  Christ— that  is,  if  he  do  not 
actively  love  him.  For  St.  John  knows  no  middle 
state  between  loving  and  hating.     Whatever  he 


The  law  of  love  93 

may  say,  one  who  hates  his  brother  belongs  to 
the  old  dark  world  and  stumbles  as  he  walks 
(John    xi.    9-10),    having    his    stumbling-block 
in  himself  because  he  has  not  light  in  his  heart, 
and  he  misses  his  way,  like  a  blind  man  (John 
xii.  35).    But  he  who  loves  his  brother  lives 
in  the  light.     He  knows  his  goal  and  sees  his 
way,   and  has  no  occasion  to  stumble.      And 
St.  John  writes  to  his  Christian  people  as  those 
who   have   the   glad,    free   hearts    of    children, 
because  in  coming  to  belong  to  Christ  they  have 
received  the  forgiveness  of  their  sins  and  been 
set  free  from  all  the  entanglements  of  the  old 
dark  world,  and  again  because  they  have  thus 
learned  to  rejoice  in  the  knowledge  of  the  Father. 
He  writes  to  them  also  as  fathers  who  have  the 
secret  of  wisdom  and  experience,  because  they 
have  known  Him  who  has  been  from  the  be- 
ginning  the  way  and   the   truth   and  the  life. 
He  writes  to  them  once  again  as  youths  who 
have  perennially  the  strength  of  youth,  because 
they  have  won  the  victory  over  the  evil  one  in 
the  power  of  the  divine  word  which  abides  in 
them.     Let  them  separate  themselves  utterly, 
then,  from  the  old  dark  world.     The  love  of 
the  Father  is  totally  incompatible  with  the  love 


94  St.  John's  Epistles 

of  the  old  world.  That  old  world  has  for  its 
contents  the  desire  for  selfish  satisfaction  and 
external  show  and  personal  aggrandizement. 
These  things  do  not  come  from  the  Father,  but 
from  the  world  which  ignores  Him.  And  this 
world  and  all  its  desires  are  passing  away.  It 
is  only  by  doing  the  will  of  God  that  we  can 
attain  to  the  life  which  abides. 

Beloved,  no  new  commandment  write  I  unto  you,  but 
an  old  commandment  which  ye  had  from  the  beginning  : 
the  old  commandment  is  the  word  which  ye  heard.  Again, 
a  new  commandment  write  I  unto  you,  which  thing  is  true 
in  him  and  in  you  ;  because  the  darkness  is  passing  away, 
and  the  true  light  already  shineth.  He  that  saith  he  is 
in  the  light,  and  hateth  his  brother,  is  in  the  darkness  even 
until  now.  He  that  loveth  his  brother  abideth  in  the 
light,  and  there  is  none  occasion  of  stumbling  in  him.  But 
he  that  hateth  his  brother  is  in  the  darkness,  and  walketh 
in  the  darkness,  and  knoweth  not  whither  he  goeth,  because 
the  darkness  hath  blinded  his  eyes. 

I  write  unto  you,  my  little  children,  because  your  sins 
are  forgiven  you  for  his  name's  sake.  I  write  unto  you, 
fathers,  because  ye  know  him  which  is  from  the  beginning. 
I  write  unto  you,  young  men,  because  ye  have  overcome 
the  evil  one.  I  have  written  unto  you,  little  children, 
because  ye  know  the  Father.  I  have  written  unto  you, 
fathers,  because  ye  know  him  which  is  from  the  beginning. 
I  have  written  unto  you,  young  men,  because  ye  are 
strong,  and  the  word  of  God  abideth  in  you,  and  ye  have 
overcome  the  evil  one.  Love  not  the  world,  neither  the 
things  that  are  in  the  world.     If  any  man  love  the  world, 


The  law  of  love  95 


the  love  of  the  Father  is  not  in  him.  For  all  that  is  in 
the  world,  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  and  the  lust  of  the  eyes, 
and  the  vainglory  of  life,  is  not  of  the  Father,  but  is  of 
the  world.  And  the  world  passeth  away,  and  the  lust 
thereof :  but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  God  abideth  for 
ever. 

1.  "The  beginning"  which  St.  John  refers 
to  must  be  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
tradition  when  they  first  received  the  word  of 
Christ  and  heard  the  new  commandment.  This 
new  commandment  is  already  old ;  and  has 
behind  it  experienced  reality  in  the  love  of  Christ 
and  of  Christians.  Christ  is  ''  the  Way/'  and 
in  walking  as  He  walked  they  too  have  found 
the  way.  This  must  be  the  meaning  of  "  which 
thing  is  true  in  Him  and  in  you  '' — truth  meaning 
reality  to  St.  John  (as  he  spoke  above,  i.  6,  of 
*'  lying  and  not  doing  the  truth/'  i.e.  not  making 
it  real  in  action)  ;  but,  none  the  less,  it  is  still 
a  new  commandment  involving  new  applications. 
It  is  easy  to  understand  (if  this  interpretation  is 
right)  what  St.  John's  meaning  was.  "  The 
new  commandment "  had  been  given  to  Jews 
at  Jerusalem,  and  the  first  disciples  in  Jerusalem 
showed  themselves  zealous  in  following  it.  But 
they  were  all  Jews  brought  up  under  the  same 
sacred    but    narrow    tradition.    And    when    it 


96  St.  John's  Epistles 

appeared  that  Gentiles  also  were  to  be 
"  brethren "  and  were  to  be  admitted  to  a 
perfect  equality  of  fellowship  with  Jews — that 
is,  men  whose  traditions  pious  Jews  had  learned 
to  execrate  and  who  were  accustomed  to  eat 
unclean  meats  in  unclean  ways — it  was  from  the 
Church  of  Jerusalem,  which  had  been  foremost  in 
the  race  of  love,  that  the  fiercest  opposition  arose. 
It  was  indeed  a  new  commandment  that  they 
had  to  obey.  Or,  again,  when  St.  John  passed 
from  Jerusalem  to  Ephesus — when  the  sacred 
city  fell  and  was  trodden  underfoot — it  was 
indeed  a  new  world,  wholly  alien  to  his  old 
traditions,  into  which  he  passed.  It  was  a  world 
in  which  all  the  various  races  which  bordered 
upon  the  Mediterranean  Sea  and  others  from 
the  further  east  were  mixed  indiscriminately 
together,  in  which  religion  had  borne  a  meaning 
as  different  as  possible  from  what  religion  had 
meant  in  Jerusalem,  and  wholly  new  ideas 
possessed  the  minds  of  men.  The  old  world 
was  gone,  and  the  new  world  in  which  the  light 
was  to  triumph  through  the  fellowship  of  the 
Church  was  appearing.  The  veil  that  was 
spread  over  all  nations  was  passing  away. 
Again  then  the   old  commandment  became  a 


The  law  of  love  97 

new  commandment.  Because  it  still  held  true 
that  Christianity  could  only  triumph  through 
the  exhibition  among  men  of  a  human  fellow- 
ship of  love  utterly  transcending  all  racial 
differences  and  prejudices. 

It  was,  in  fact,  in  great  measure  because  it 
did  exhibit  such  a  fellowship,  because,  in  spite 
of  all  the  prejudices  and  suspicions  felt  against 
the  Christians,  the  heathen  world  could  not 
restrain  its  astonishment  at  seeing  how  they 
loved  one  another,  that  it  won  the  heart  of  the 
world.  Alienated  from  the  world  of  the  Eoman 
empire,  often  debarred  from  their  old  trades 
and  occupations,  partly  because  the  occupations 
themselves  were  tainted  with  idolatry,  partly 
because  the  suspicions  and  prejudices  of  their 
fellows  drove  them  out,  the  Christians  were 
forced  to  develop  a  social  and  economic  system 
of  their  own,  on  the  basis  of  their  religious 
principles,  for  mutual  support  and  encourage- 
ment. And  it  was  a  fine  expression  of  the  law 
of  brotherhood,  really  believed  in  and  applied. 

If  we  leap  over  the  intervening  centuries, 
with  their  glory  and  their  shame,  and  come  to 
our  own  time,  we  can  very  well  understand  how 
the   old  commandment  becomes   a  new  com- 


98  St.  John's  Epistles 

mandment.  Thus,  when  the  Englishman,  proud 
of  his  superior  race,  finds  himself  in  Africa  or 
India  required  really  to  welcome  and  love  as 
brethren  in  Christ  men  of  a  totally  different 
tradition  and  civilization  (or  absence  of  civili- 
zation) from  his  own,  truly  for  him  the  old  com- 
mandment has  become  a  new  commandment  of 
amazing  difficulty.  Or  when  the  breakdown  of 
our  old  social  system,  with  all  its  naive  in- 
equalities of  privilege  and  conditions,  brings  us 
face  to  face  with  a  new  and  turbulent  demand 
for  justice,  as  meaning  not  less  than  equality  of 
opportunity  for  all  men,  and  the  abandonment 
of  an  old  status  of  privilege  for  the  few,  a  status 
which  in  lapse  of  time  has  come  to  be  a  second 
nature,  truly  with  deep  searchings  of  heart  we 
find  out  that  the  old  commandment  has  become 
a  new  commandment,  and  that  we  must  obey  it 
or  be  convicted  of  "  lying  and  doing  not  the 
truth/'  Or  to  put  the  same  problem  from 
another  point  of  view.  The  old  idea  of  the  duty 
of  almsgiving  seemed  simple.  We  were  to  give 
of  our  superfluity  to  help  the  poor  and  miserable. 
We  were  not  concerned  with  the  causes  of  misery 
and  poverty.  Our  business  was  to  supply 
relief  in  this  case  and  that,  as  they  were  pre- 


The  law  of  love     '  99 

sented  to  our  notice.  But  now  it  appears  that 
sometliing  mucli  more  is  wanted — ''  not  charity 
but  justice/'  as  it  is  phrased,  though  the  idea 
of  charity  is  thereby  degraded.  All  this  relief 
work  is  unavailing.  We  have  to  attend  to  the 
grounds  and  sources  of  the  dominant  evil  of 
ignoble  poverty.  We  see  that  except  in  com- 
paratively small  proportions  and  in  far  more 
remediable  forms  it  need  not  exist.  A  juster 
social  order — an  order  more  worthy  of  being 
called  "  charitable  " — that  is,  inspired  by  love 
and  brotherhood — has  to  be  created.  Again 
the  old  commandment  has  become  a  new  com- 
mandment, and  we  are  staggered  at  the  greatness 
of  its  demand. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  to  enlarge  here  on 
these  new  demands.  It  is  enough  to  suggest 
how  again-  and  again  the  old  commandment 
becomes  a  new  commandment.  We  know 
Jerome's  familiar  story  of  St.  John,  when  a  very 
old  man,  being  carried  down  into  the  Christian 
assembly  Sunday  after  Sunday,  and  saying 
always  the  same  thing,  "  Little  children,  love 
one  another."  Did  they  complain — "  We  have 
heard  this  so  often  before "  ?  Yes,  St.  John 
would  say,  but  even  every  week  and  to  every 
8 


100  St.  Johns  Epistles 

man  the  old  commandment  becomes  a  new 
commandment  and  demands  a  new  effort.  We 
have  no  sooner  settled  down  in  our  theology  or 
our  practice  into  a  routine  than  we  have  begun 
to  "  make  the  commandment  of  God ''  (or  His 
truth)  "  of  none  effect  by  our  tradition/'  and  the 
prophetic  spirit  is  needed  to  awaken  us  to  some 
fresh  beginning. 

2.  St.  John,  we  observe,  sees  things  in  ex- 
tremes. We  shall  have  to  notice  this  charac- 
teristic later  on.  But  here  we  see  that  he 
acknowledges  no  middle  ground  between  ''  lov- 
ing '"  your  brother  and  "  hating  "  him.  As  our 
Lord  said,  "  He  that  is  not  with  me  is  against 
me,"  so  St.  John  would  reckon  selfish  indiffer- 
ence or  the  weak  sort  of  pity  which  does  not 
exert  itself  practically  to  remedy  the  evils  which 
it  perceives  (iii.  17)  as  hatred.  Hatred  is 
everything  which  is  not  active  love ;  as  again 
our  Lord  says,  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not — 
depart  from  me.''  It  is  only  the  full  force  of 
active  love  which  can  really  illuminate  the  heart 
of  man  and  free  him  from  internal  stumbling- 
blocks  and  show  him  both  the  goal  and  the 
way.  But  we  are  always  tempted  to  narrow 
down  the  commandment  to  suit  our  own  lethargy. 


The  law  of  love  101 

So  with  brilliant  irony  Clough  parodies  our 
treatment  of  the  sixth  commandment — 

"  Thou  shalt  not  kill,  but  need'st  not  strive 
Officiously  to  keep  alive." 

St.  John  would  have  us  believe  that  unless  we 
really  "  strive  to  keep  alive  "  we  do  in  fact 
"  kill." 

3.  "  Because  the  darkness  hath  blinded  his 
eyes.''  He  has  become  as  blind  as  a  mole. 
Having  refused  to  see,  at  last  he  cannot  see. 
Bring  him  out  into  the  sunshine,  and  it  will 
make  no  difference.  That  is  fundamentally 
the  meaning  of  hell— that  a  man  has  so  long 
refused  the  truth  and  the  right  that  at  last  he 
has  no  faculty  to  recognize  it  or  welcome  it. 

i.  "  The  children  "  and  "  the  fathers  "  and 
the  "  young  men  "  to  whom  St.  John  writes 
are  not  to  be  interpreted  as  distinct  classes  of 
the  community,  as  when  St.  Paul  writes  to 
parents  and  children,  husbands  and  wives, 
masters  and  slaves.  They  are  different  names 
for  the  whole  body  in  different  aspects.  AH 
have,  or  should  have,  the  heart  and  freshness 
of  childhood,  the  wisdom  and  experience  of  age, 
and  the  strength  of  youth.     We  may  compare 


102  St.  Johns  E'pistles 

(1)  "  Except  ye  . .  .  become  as  little  children,  ye 
shall  in  no  wise  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  "  (Matt,  xviii.  3) ;  and  (2)  "I  am  wiser 
than  the  aged,  because  I  keep  thy  command- 
ments ''  (Ps.  cxix.  100) ;  or  "  For  honourable 
old  age  is  not  that  which  standeth  in  length 
of  time,  nor  is  its  measure  given  by  number  of 
years  :  but  understanding  is  grey  hairs  unto 
men,  and  an  unspotted  life  is  ripe  old  age'' 
(Wisdom  iii.  8) ;  and  (3)  "  Even  the  youths  shall 
faint  and  be  weary,  and  the  young  men  shall 
utterly  fall :  but  they  that  wait  upon  the  Lord 
shall  renew  their  strength  "  (Is.  xl.  30-1). 

In  each  of  its  three  aspects,  as  children,  as 
fathers,  as  youths,  St.  John  gives  a  double 
message  to  the  Church,  saying  first  "  I  write," 
then  ''  I  wrote."  It  is  very  difficult  to  see 
any  significance  in  the  use  of  the  two  tenses, 
unless  we  take  the  simplest  explanation,  and 
suppose  that  St.  John  was  interrupted  in  writing 
the  Epistle  after  the  threefold  "  I  write,"  and 
began  again  by  almost  repeating  what  he  had 
said  already. 

The  two  messages  show  most  difference  in 
the  first  case,  the  message  to  "  children." 
It   runs   first   "  because   your   sins   have   been 


The  law  of  love  103 


forgiven  you  for  his  name's  sake."  The  "  name  " 
of  Christ  carries  with  it  the  thought  of  all  that 
is  revealed  in  His  person  and  office.  It  is  because 
of  what  He  is  and  has  done  that  our  sins  have 
been  forgiven.  In  the  second  instance  it  runs, 
"  Because  ye  have  known  the  Father.''  But  as 
in  ii.  3  to  have  our  sins  forgiven  through  Christ 
our  propitiation  is  shown  to  involve  "  knowing  " 
Him,  so  here  to  have  our  sins  forgiven  on  account 
of  Christ's  name  is  treated  as  identical  with 
having  known  the  Father  who  bestows  the 
forgiveness,  for  it  is  to  enter  into  the  intimate 
relationship  of  children  to  their  Father.  The 
message  to  "  fathers "  is  the  same  in  both 
cases  :  "  because  ye  have  known  Him  who  is 
from  the  beginning" — i.e.  the  eternal  Word  or 
Son  of  the  Father,  in  the  knowledge  of  whom 
we  are  admitted  to  the  true  wisdom,  the  fellow- 
ship in  the  eternal  counsels.  The  message  to 
the  young  men  is  slightly  expanded  in  the 
second  delivery — ''  because  ye  have  overcome 
the  wicked  one  "  being  preceded  by  the  words 
"  because  ye  are  strong  and  the  word  of  God 
abideth  in  you."  Thus  the  ground  of  their 
victory  is  shown.  (St.  John  has,  as  we  shall 
see   later,    no    hesitation   in    witnessing    to    a 


104  St.  John's  Efistles 

personal  adversary  whom  they  have  overcome — 
the  devil. )  This  threefold  message  to  Christians 
as  *'  children,"  as  "  fathers,"  and  as  "  young 
men "  is  full  of  inspiration,  and  suggests  a 
community  at  once  full  of  childlike  confidence 
and  freshness,  wise  with  the  wisdom  of  God 
and  triumphant  over  all  forces  of  evil. 

5.  "The  world"  in  a  bad  sense  means  here 
as  elsewhere  human  society  as  it  organizes  itself 
apart  from  God  or  in  rebellion  against  Him. 
In  this  world  mankind  has  lost  its  true  centre 
and  object,  and  seeks  its  gratification  in  selfish 
desires  and  its  objects  of  worship  in  idols.  It 
is  rooted  and  grounded  in  a  lie — the  idea  of 
human  independence  of  God,  and  it  will  pass 
away  "  even  as  a  dream  when  one  awake th." 
The  only  abiding  life  is  rooted  in  the  truth, 
which  is  the  will  of  God. 

And  the  contents  of  this  godless  world,  the 
characteristics  of  "  worldliness,"  are :  (1)  "  the 
desire  of  the  flesh,"  which  includes  all  the  selfish 
appetites,  every  form  of  passion  for  appropriating 
things  we  desire  without  regard  to  the  intention 
of  God,  whether  the  passion  be  sexual  lust, 
gluttony,  vanity,  the  love  of  money  or  revenge ; 
(2)   "  the  desire  of  the  eyes,"  i.e.  the  desire  to 


The  law  of  love  105 


make  for  ourselves  a  world  pleasing  to  con- 
template, again  without  regard  to  the  purpose 
of  God ;  as  when  men  seek  selfishly  to  fashion  a 
beautiful  world  for  themselves  within  a  narrow 
circle,  surrounding  themselves  with  beautiful 
and  pleasing  objects  and  persons  without  regard 
to  others  who  are  left  outside  in  ignorance  and 
hunger — "  hiding  themselves  from  their  own 
flesh  '' ;  (3)  "  the  vain-glory  of  life,"  i.e.  the 
exultation  in  all  the  visible  show  of  life,  as  a 
sign  of  what  man  can  accomplish,  without  any 
thought  of  God,  the  creator  of  all  that  is.  "Is 
not  this  great  Babylon  which  I  have  builded  ?  " 
This  account  of  "  the  world  "  and  of  its  contents 
goes  home  to  our  consciences  to-day,  as  we 
contemplate  the  civilization  at  the  foundations 
of  which  the  Great  War  has  struck  its  blow, 
and  causes  us  to  read  with  trembling  St.  John's 
warning. 

6.  We  must  notice  that  "  brother  "  in  the 
New  Testament  means  a  fellow-Christian.  It 
is  in  the  "  love  of  the  brethren  "  that  we  are  to 
learn  "  love  "  for  all  men  (2  Pet.  i.  7).  Perhaps 
in  the  parable  of  the  Last  Judgement  our  Lord 
calls  all  suffering  men  His  "  brethren,  "^  but  else- 

1  Matt,  xxvi,  40. 


106  St  John's  Epistles 

where  tlie  word  means  always  fellow- Jews  ^  or,  as 
in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  fellow-Christians. 
This  limitation  embodies  a  great  principle. 
All  men  are  meant  for  brotherhood,  as  the  Church 
is  meant  for  all  men.  But  brotherhood  is  hard 
to  realize.  It  means,  as  the  New  Testament 
understands  it,  so  much.  And  the  Christians 
knew  that  their  entrance  into  brotherhood  began 
with  their  redemption  through  Christ  from  the 
world  of  sin  and  selfishness  into  the  family 
of  God. 

1  As  in-  Matt,  v,  23  ;  Luke  vi.  41 1 


§4.    1  JOHN  ii.  18-29 

THE    ANTICHRISTS 

It  is  obvious  througliout  the  Epistle  that 
Christianity  is  a  life — a  corporate  life — in 
St.  John's  estimation,  and  not  a  philosophy. 
None  the  less,  it  now  appears  that  it  is  a  life 
based  upon  or  involving  a  revelation  of  truth 
such  as  the  human  mind  must  apprehend,  accept, 
and  insist  upon  in  the  form  of  intellectual 
propositions,  or  what  we  call  a  dogmatic  creed. 
And  resistance  to  intellectual  error  is  as  clear 
a  duty  as  resistance  to  wickedness.  Thus  in 
the  Kevelation,  side  by  side  with  the  ten-horned 
and  seven-headed  "  beast ''  who  represents 
the  world-power  which  violently  persecutes  the 
Church,  is  "  another  beast "  who  uses  the 
faculties  of  intellect  to  "  deceive  "  the  world, 
in  the  interests  of  the  world-power,  and  who  is 
elsewhere  called  "  the  false  prophet." '  And 
so  similarly  here  we  hear  both  of  "  the  world  " 
which  "  hates  "  the  Church  on  account  of  its 
moral  claim  and  principles,  and  which  *'  lieth 

1  Rev.  xiii.,  xvi.  13,  xix.  20,  xx,  10. 
107 


108  St.  John's  Epistles 

in  the  evil  one/'  ^  and  also,  in  the  passage 
we  are  just  going  to  consider,  of  the  "  anti- 
christs "  who  are  seceders  or  apostates  from  the 
Church,  who  preach  a  lie,  who  are  deceivers 
and  false  prophets,  and  who  belong  to  the 
world  and  are  welcomed  by  the  world.^  The 
point  is  that  St.  John  feels  himself  compelled 
to  emphasize  the  necessity  of  orthodoxy  in  the 
same  imperative  terms  as  the  necessity  for  love, 
and  to  demand  as  uncompromising  opposition 
to  intellectual  as  to  moral  error.'  This  will 
appear  repeatedly  as  we  continue  our  study. 
But  we  must  pause  at  this  point  to  collect  from 
the  Epistle  the  indications  of  the  particular 
form  of  false  teaching  which  St.  John  is  thinking 
of  and  to  endeavour  to  interpret  them. 

The  false  teaching,  it  appears,  is  the  denial 
that  "  Jesus  is  the  Christ,''  or  (what  seems  to 
be  regarded  as  the  same  thing)  that  "  Jesus  is 
the  Son  of  God,"  or  that  "  Jesus  Christ  is  come 
in  the  flesh,"  or  that  He  ''  cometh  [i.e.  is  still 
to  be  expected  at  His  ''appearing"]  in  the 
flesh."  V 

1  1  John  iii.  13,  v.  19. 

2  1  John  ii.  18-19,  21-3,  iv.  1-6,  and  2  John  7. 

3  2  John  10-11. 

4  1  John  ii.  22-3,  iv,  2-3,  15,  v.  1,  5;  2  John  7. 


The  antichrists  109 


It  appears  to  be  out  of  place  to  interpret 
the  denial  tliat  "  Jesus  is  the  Christ "  simply 
of  the  already  old-fashioned  denial  by  the 
Jews  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah  or  was  the 
Son  of  God.  With  this  original  denial  we 
are  face  to  face  in  the  Fourth  Gospel.  But 
the  orthodox  Jews  are  not  in  evidence  here. 
The  indications  taken  together  point  to  a  new 
type  of  hostile  thought,  such  as  had  arisen  not 
from  the  Jewish  people,  but  from  apostate 
Christian  leaders.  It  is  "  Gnostics,''  not  Jews, 
who  are  now  the  enemy.  Their  Christ  (con- 
ceived more  or  less  on  the  lines  of  the  late 
Jewish  apocalypse,  the  Book  of  Enoch)  is  a 
heavenly,  semi-divine  being,  who  is  also  perhaps 
called  the  Son  of  God,  and  the  point  of 
opposition  is  to  the  idea  of  an  incarnation — to 
the  idea  that  the  heavenly  or  divine  being  can 
actually  have  become  man  in  the  person  of 
Jesus,  or  can  actually  and  permanently  have 
taken  flesh.  The  heavenly  being,  they  would 
have  contended,  must  have  remained  a  separate 
person  with  a  separate  destiny,  not  to  be 
identified  with  the  human  person,  Jesus  of 
Nazareth. 

In  this  connection  a  very  early  reading  of 


110  St.  John's  Efisiles 

iv.  3  is  also  to  be  noted.  Instead  of  "  Every 
spirit  wliich  confesseth  not  Jesus,"  the  reading 
riinSj  "  Every  spirit  wliich  dissolveth  Jesus."  ' 
I  have,  in  the  course  of  this  exposition,  given 
my  reasons  for  thinking  that  this  reading  is 
probably  original,  and  that  (in  accordance  with 
the  plainer  indications  in  the  Epistle)  it  would 
naturally  be  interpreted  of  any  doctrine  which 
"  dissolves "  Christ's  person,  and  instead  of 
acknowledging  one  person,  the  Son  of  God  made 
flesh,  postulates  two  persons  or  beings — a  higher 
divine  being  called  the  Son  or  the  Christ,  and 
an  ordinary  human  being  called  Jesus.  Such 
teaching  would  accordingly  involve  the  denial 
that  the  man  Jesus  was  or  is,  in  His  own 
person,  either  the  Son  or  the  divine  Christ, 
or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  would  deny  the  verity 
of  the  incarnation — that  truly  and  really  the 
eternal  Son  was  "  made  flesh."  Then,  finally, 
in  V.  6  it  is  implied  that  the  false  teaching  ac- 
knowledges that  the  Christ  (or  the  Son)  "  came 
by  water,"  i.e.  presumably  at  the  baptism  of 
Jesus,  but  denies  that  He  came  "  by  blood," 
i.e.  denies  to  Him  any  participation  in  the 
passion.    This  much  I  think  we  could  gather 

*  Rather  than  "  annulleth,"  as  R.V.  margin  translates. 


The  antichrists  111 


by  way  of  probable  conjecture  from  the  Epistle 
itself,  in  the  light  of  what  we  know  of  the 
early  forms  of  Gnosticism.  But  all  these 
hints  or  indications  as  to  the  doctrine  which 
St.  John  was  so  strenuously  opposing  are 
precisely  in  accordance  with  the  account 
which  Irenseus  gives  us  of  the  false  teaching 
of  Cerinthus,  the  traditional  opponent  of  St. 
John. 

This  Saint  Irenseus  is  found  as  an  influential 
presbyter  in  the  Church  of  Lyons  in  a.d.  177, 
and  was  there  made  bishop  in  succession  to 
St.  Pothinus,  the  martyr  in  the  persecution 
under  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  continued  as  bishop 
till  about  the  end  of  the  century.  There  was 
no  one  in  the  whole  Christian  world  held  in 
higher  esteem  than  he.  And  his  early  home 
had  been  in  Asia  Minor.  There,  in  his  early 
youth,  he  had  been  a  disciple  of  the  famous 
Polycarp,  bishop  of  Smyrna,  later  the  martyr ; 
and  he  tells  us  (in  a  letter  to  a  certain  Florinus, 
who  had  been  with  him  there  at  the  same  period, 
probably  in  the  imperial  service)  how  vividly 
he  remembers  all  about  Polycarp,  his  look,  his 
character,  his  habit,  and  his  teaching — how  he 
used  to  narrate  his  intercourse  with  John  and 


112  St.  John's  Epistles 

with  the  others  who  had  seen  the  Lord  :  for 
Polycarp  had  been  appointed  bishop  in  Smyrna 
by  the  surviving  apostles.^  Irenaeus's  life,  in 
Asia,  in  Rome  (for  he  was  more  than  once  in 
Eome),  and  in  Gaul,  coincided  with  the  activity 
of  the  "  Gnostics,"  and  it  is  mainly  against 
them  that  he  wrote  his  great  work  in  defence 
of  orthodox  Christianity  {The  Conviction  and 
Overturning  of  the  Knowledge  [Gnosis']  falsely 
so-called).  The  Gnostics,  who  were  so  named 
because,  like  modern  theosophists,  they  laid 
stress  upon  their  superior  knowledge  (gnosis) 
and  enlightenment,  and  despised  the  simple 
faith  of  the  Church,  belonged  to  various  schools 
and  followed  various  leaders  who  combined  in 
different  amalgamations  Jewish  and  Christian 
ideas  and  terms  with  ideas  and  terms  derived 
from  Oriental  and  Greek  speculation.  But  the 
central  motive  of  all  these  movements  or  schools 
of  thought  was  the  refusal  to  bring  the  supreme 
God,  the  highest  and  the  holiest,  into  any 
immediate  contact  with  matter.  This  con- 
tempt for  matter  or  the  material  world  was 
common  in  different  degrees  to  Greek  philosophy 
and  to  Oriental  speculation,  and  it  was,  as  I 

^  See  Iren.  iii.  3,  4,  and  fragm.  ii. 


The  antichrists  115 


have  said,  the  soul  of  all  the  movements  grouped 
together  as  Gnostic,  which  have  remarkable 
affinities  with  modern  theosophy  and  indeed 
with  other  kinds  of  modern  idealism.  In  ac- 
cordance with  this  fundamental  characteristic 
they  all  had  to  find  some  creator  for  this  lower, 
material  world  other  than  the  Supreme  God, 
who  could  not  be  made  responsible  for  it,  and 
also  some  way  of  deliverance  for  the  souls  of  men, 
or  the  fragments  of  the  spiritual  principle 
suffering  bondage  in  material  bodies,  other 
than  the  incarnation  of  any  properly  divine 
being.  The  very  idea  of  the  incarnation  of 
God  in  a  material  body  was  intolerable  to 
them.  Their  way  of  bridging  over  the  gulf 
between  the  Supreme  God  and  the  lower  world 
was  by  postulating  "  emanations ''  from  God 
in  a  gradually  descending  scale.  And  some  of 
these  schools  of  Gnostics  took  up  the  idea  or  name 
of  the  Christ,  represented  as  a  heavenly  being, 
almost  divine  in  character,  and  they  gave  the 
name  of  "  Christ ''  to  one  of  their  semi-divine 
"  emanations  "  who  belonged  to  the  spiritual 
and  not  the  material  world.  With  this  much 
by  way  of  explanation  we  shall  be  able  to  under- 
stand Irenseus's  quite  careful  and  credible  account 


114  St.  John's  Epistles 

of  Cerintlius,  first  of  all  taking  note  tliat 
Irenaeus  tells  us,  on  the  authority  of  a  statement 
made  by  Polycarp  to  persons  at  Rome,  that 
St.  John  had  such  a  horror  of  Cerinthus  that, 
perceiving  him  in  a  bathing  establishment 
whither  he  had  gone  to  take  a  bath,  he  withdrew 
in  all  haste  with  the  exclamation,  ''Let  us 
escape,  lest  the  roof  fall  in,  because  Cerinthus 
is  there,  the  enemy  of  the  truth."  ^  We  can 
imagine  St.  John,  half  playfully,  but  with  a 
very  great  seriousness  under  the  playfulness,  so 
behaving.  At  any  rate,  it  fairly  represents 
his  profound  horror  of  any  teaching  which 
seemed  to  him  fundamentally  anti-Christian. 
What,  then,  was  Cerinthus's  doctrine,  according 
to  Irenaeus  ?  It  had  the  two  fundamental 
Gnostic  characteristics :  (1)  that  the  creator 
of  the  world  had  been  a  "  power  very  far  separate 
from  the  Supreme  God  and  ignorant  of  Him  " ; 
and  (2)  that  Jesus  was  a  man  born  in  normal 
human  fashion  of  Joseph  and  Mary — simply  a 
pre-eminently  good  and  wise  man — upon  whom, 
after  his  baptism,  a  divine  being,  the  Christ, 
descended  from  "  the  Supreme  Authority "  in 
the  figure  of   a  dove,  announced  to   Him    the 

Iren.  iii.  3,  4. 


The  antichrists  115 


unknown  Father,  and  worked  miracles ;  but 
that  at  the  last  the  Christ  "  flew  back  again  " 
from  Jesus,  and  Jesus  alone  suffered  and  rose 
again  while  the  Christ  remained  impassible, 
being  a  spiritual  being.^  If  we  suppose  that 
Cerinthus,  like  other  Gnostics,  spoke  also  of  a 
Son  of  God,  whether  as  identified  with  the 
Christ  or  as  another  divine  or  semi-divine  being 
from  the  spiritual  world,  the  account  of  Cerin- 
thus's  teaching  satisfies  all  the  requirements 
which  our  Epistle  suggests  for  St.  John's  op- 
ponents. Irenaeus,  we  must  add,  would  have 
us  believe  that  St.  John  had  Cerinthus  specially 
in  mind  in  writing  his  Gospel,  but  he  makes 
no  allusion  to  the  motive  of  the  Epistles, 
where  opposition  to  Cerinthus  is  much  more 
apparent. 

Thus  it  is  that  St.  John  has  reason  to  denounce 
those  who  "  dissolve  "  Jesus  ;  who  make  of 
Jesus  and  Christ,  or  Jesus  and  the  Son  of  God, 
two  separate  beings ;  who  deny  that  the  Son  of 
God  has  Himself  come  in  our  flesh  and  is  still 
so  to  come  again ;  and  who,  while  they  ac- 
knowledge the  participation  of  the  divine  being 
in  the  baptism  (the  water),  refuse  to  acknow- 

1  Iren.  i,  26,  1  ;   iii.  11,  1, 


116  St.  John's  Epistles 

ledge  His  participation  in  the  passion  (the 
blood). 1 

With  this  amount  of  explanation  we  can  go 
on  to  consider  the  next  section  of  the  Epistle, 

Explanatory  Analysis. — We  are  living  in  a  last 
hour  of  the  world's  day.  That  is  to  say,  the  Day 
of  the  Lord — the  day  of  the  coming  of  Christ  in 
His  glory — is  at  hand.  But  a  last  hour  is  an 
hour  of  strenuous  conflict,  in  which  the  forces 
that  resist  Christ  gather  for  their  last  effort. 
You  have  heard  about  the  coming  of  Antichrist. 
But  if  you  look  around  you  see  that  many  anti- 
christs have  arisen.  That  is  the  sign  of  a  last 
hour.  These  antichrists  did  not  spring  up  in 
the  heathen  world.  They  are  apostate  Chris- 
tians. But  though  they  formally  belonged  to 
our  company,  they  did  not  really  belong  to  us 
or  they  would  have  remained  with  us.  To  show 
their  true  character — to  warn  us  that  all  Chris- 
tians are  not  real  Christians — they  left  us.  Now 
they  are  striving  to  lead  you  astray  with  an 

^  It  appears  that  Hippolytus  gave  a  rather  different  account 
of  Cerinthus's  teaching.  But  Irenseus's  account  certainly 
coincides  remarkably  with  the  teaching  which  St.  John  appears 
to  have  in  view.  It  should  be  noticed  that  Cerinthus  was  not 
a  Docetist,  and  there  is  no  real  suggestion  of  Docetism  in  the 
doctrine  which  St.  John  is  opposing. 


Tlie  antichrists  117 


alien  doctrine — a  lie  incompatible  with  the 
truth.  And  you,  because  you  have  received 
the  anointing  of  the  Spirit  of  truth,  have  all  of 
you  the  power  to  know  the  truth  and  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  truth  and  the  falsehood. 
What  is  the  falsehood  ?  It  is  the  denial  of  the 
Incarnation — the  denial  that  Jesus,  who  lived 
and  died  in  human  flesh,  is  the  very  Christ  and 
Son  of  God.  And  to  deny  that  Jesus  is  the  Son 
is  to  deny  the  Father.  There  is  no  belief  in  the 
Father  possible  except  by  belief  in  Jesus  Christ 
as  the  Son.  That  is  the  original  message  which 
you  received  when  you  became  Christians  and 
to  which  you  must  abide  faithful.  The  eternal 
life,  the  life  of  fellowship  with  the  Son  and  the 
Father,  is  promised  to  those  only  who  so  believe 
in  Jesus. 

I  have  written  this  to  warn  you  against  those 
who  would  lead  you  astray.  But  it  is  no  ex- 
ternal warnings  that  you  need.  You  have 
received  as  a  permanent  endowment  of  your 
nature  the  unction  of  the  Spirit  of  truth.  He 
is  an  infallible  guide  and  teacher,  and  you  have 
nothing  to  do  but  cling  closely  to  His  original 
teaching.  Holding  to  the  Spirit,  you  will  be 
ready  for  Christ,  whenever  He  is  manifested  in 


118  St.  John's  Epistles 

His  glory.  That  day  of  His  coming  is  what 
we  have  to  expect,  and  our  effort  must  be  to 
be  so  loyal  to  Him  as  that  His  coming  may 
bring  us  no  failure  of  heart  and  no  danger  of 
being  shamed  away  from  Him.  And  the  mark 
of  true  sonship,  as  derived  from  Him,  is  this 
only — it  is  likeness  of  character,  a  righteousness 
like  His. 

Little  children,  it  is  the  last  hour  :  and  as  ye  heard  that 
antichrist  cometh,  even  now  have  there  arisen  many 
antichrists  ;  whereby  we  know  that  it  is  the  last  hour. 
They  went  out  from  us,  but  they  were  not  of  us  ;  for  if 
they  had  been  of  us,  they  would  have  continued  with  us  : 
but  they  went  out,  that  they  might  be  made  manifest  how 
that  they  all  are  not  of  us.  And  ye  have  an  anointing 
from  the  Holy  One,  and  ye  all  know.  I  have  not  written 
unto  you  because  ye  know  not  the  truth,  but  because 
ye  know  it,  and  because  no  lie  is  of  the  truth.  Who  is  the 
liar  but  he  that  denieth  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  ?  This 
is  the  antichrist,  even  he  that  denieth  the  Father  and  the 
Son.  Whosoever  denieth  the  Son,  the  same  hath  not  the 
Father  :  he  that  confesseth  the  Son  hath  the  Father  also. 
As  for  you,  let  that  abide  in  you  which  ye  heard  from  the 
beginning.  If  that  which  ye  heard  from  the  beginning 
abide  in  you,  ye  also  shall  abide  in  the  Son,  and  in  the 
Father.  And  this  is  the  promise  which  he  promised  us, 
even  the  life  eternal.  These  things  have  I  written  unto 
you  concerning  them  that  would  lead  you  astray.  And 
as  for  you,  the  anointing  which  ye  received  of  him  abideth 
in  you,  and  ye  need  not  that  any  one  teach  you ;   but  aa 


TJie  antichrists  119 


his  anointing  teacheth  you  concerning  all  things,  and  is 
true,  and  is  no  lie,  and  even  as  it  taught  you,  ye  abide  in 
him.  And  now,  my  little  children,  abide  in  him  ;  that, 
if  he  shall  be  manifested,  we  may  have  boldness,  and  not 
be  ashamed  before  him  at  his  coming.  If  ye  know  that 
he  is  righteous,  ye  know  that  every  one  also  that  doeth 
righteousness  is  begotten  of  him. 

The  "  last  day,"  that  is,  the  "  manifestation  "' 
of  Christ,  His  final  "  coming  "  in  glory  (ver.  28), 
is  the  background  of  this  whole  paragraph.  If 
St.  John  is  the  author  of  the  Apocaljrpse  which 
closes  our  Bible,  no  doubt  his  mind  was  full  of 
this  subject.  But  in  his  Gospel  and  Epistles 
he  only  alludes  to  it  or  assumes  it  (see  in  the 
Gospel,  V.  28,  vi.  39, 40,  etc.,  xi.  24,  xii.  48,  xxi.  22, 
and  in  the  Epistle  ii.  28  and  iii.  2).  Probably 
he  thought  that  in  the  existing  Gospels  and  in 
the  current  traditions  of  the  Church  stress 
enough  was  laid  on  the  future  coming,  and  that 
his  task  was  to  supply  what  was  lacking — to 
strengthen  the  tradition  of  the  Church  in  the 
matter  of  Christ's  own  witness  to  Himself,  as 
He  had  borne  it  in  the  world  by  word  and  sign, 
and  of  His  ''coming"  by  the  Spirit  in  the  Church 
to  perpetuate  His  life  here  and  now  among  men, 
that  is  "  the  eternal  life,''  which  is  St.  John's 
name  for  the  Kingdom  of  God.     Nevertheless, 


120  St.  John's  Episths 

none  can  doubt  that  St.  John  also  looked 
forward  eagerly  to  the  coming  of  Christ  in  glory 
— His  final  manifestation.  And  as  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  perplexity  upon  the  subject, 
something  must  be  said  about  it. 

1.  The  prophets  of  Israel  constantly  pro- 
claimed "  the  day  of  the  Lord  " — the  day  of 
judgement  upon  all  rebellious  persons  and  in- 
stitutions— the  day  when  God  shall  come  into 
His  own  in  the  world  that  He  has  made.  And 
must  we  not  say  that  such  a  belief  is  hardly 
separable  from  belief  in  God  ?  If  God  exists 
and  is  Lord,  He  must  at  last  vindicate  His 
sovereignty.  But  this  final,  acknowledged  reign 
of  God  might  come  about  by  a  gradual  evolution, 
a  gradual  and  progressive  advance  of  good 
over  evil.  Not  so,  however,  did  the  prophets, 
and  especially  not  so  did  the  later  apocalyptic 
teachers  of  Israel,  expect  God  to  vindicate 
Himself  at  last,  but  by  an  abrupt  catastrophe. 
The  powers  of  evil,  the  powers  which  ignore  and 
resist  God,  would  go  on  in  their  pride  and  in- 
solence, and  continually  seem  too  strong  for 
the  people  of  God.  Then  suddenly  and  finally 
God  would  act,  to  overthrow  the  adversaries 
and  establish  His  reign  and  the  triumph  of  His 


The  antichrists  121 


faitHful  ones.  And  the  instrument  of  this  final 
judgement  and  triumph  was  to  be  the  promised 
Christ :  so,  at  least,  the  belief  of  the  Jews  had 
tended  to  fix  itself  when  our  Lord  came  into  the 
world,  though  no  doubt  with  much  variation 
and  uncertainty  in  detail.  Now,  in  several 
ways  our  Lord  profoundly  corrected  in  the 
minds  of  His  disciples  this  current  belief,  as  by 
His  teaching  of  the  suffering  Messiah,  and  of 
the  judgement  on  Israel  itself,  and  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  as  a  thing  now  present  and  secretly 
working  among  men,  and  of  the  Mission  of  the 
Spirit,  and  His  own  return  by  the  Spirit  to 
establish  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  Church. 
In  all  these  ways  He  turned  men's  minds  in 
another  direction  and  towards  ideals  quite 
different  from  those  of  Jewish  Apocalypse. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  quite  certain  that  He  main- 
tained the  belief  in  the  minds  of  His  disciples 
that  this  age  of  the  world  would  have  an  end, 
and  that  the  end  would  be  His  coming  to  judge 
the  world  and  to  establish  the  divine  kingdom 
in  all  its  fulness  of  glory.  This  is  what  our 
Lord  in  St.  John's  Gospel  frequently  calls 
*'  the  last  day."  This  is,  therefore,  the  faith 
of  the  Church  as  it  is  recited  in  the  Creeds.    And 


122  St.  Johns  Efistles 

I  ask  again,  is  faith  in  God  really  separable 
from  belief  in  His  final  triumph,  or  faith  in 
Christ,  as  manifested  God,  separable  from  the 
belief  that  His  coming  in  glory  will  close  the 
vista  of  history  ?  Every  Christian  heart  should 
cry  out  "  Even  so  come.  Lord  Jesus  "  ;  and  it 
is  because  we  do  not  heartily  and  all  together 
so  cry  out  that  we  are  not  allowed  to  see  even 
"  one  of  the  days  of  the  Son  of  Man/' 

2.  The  Antichrist. — But  granted  this  belief 
in  "  the  last  day,''  how  is  it  to  be  expected  ? 
By  a  gradual  and  progressive  improvement  of 
the  world  till  the  lordship  of  Christ  is  everywhere 
recognized  ?  That  progress  is  the  intention  of 
God,  and  that  the  Church,  which  represents  His 
mind,  is  intended  to  expand,  and  thereby  also 
the  whole  force  of  good  in  the  world  to  be 
manifested  to  its  utmost  limits,  is  certain  and 
has  been  matter  of  experience.  It  is  irreligious 
to  doubt  the  divine  purpose  of  progressive  good 
and  idle  to  deny  its  reality.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
always  progress  by  conflict.  The  embodiments 
of  evil  change  their  shape,  but  evil  shows  no 
signs  of  disappearing  or  even  weakening.  Thus, 
prophets  and  our  Lord  lend  no  countenance  to 
the  idea   of  a  gradual  disappearance   of  evil. 


The  antichrists  123 


Rather  they  lead  us  to  anticipate  the  fiercest 
conflict  at  the  end.  This  is  the  implication  of 
our  Lord's  question,  "  When  the  Son  of  Man 
Cometh,  shall  He  find  the  faith  on  the  earth  ?  " 
The  strain  on  faith,  it  seems,  is  to  be  intensest 
at  the  end.  So  the  early  Church,  perhaps 
learning  it  from  the  Jews,  anticipated  at  the 
end  a  sort  of  incarnation  of  the  forces  of  evil 
and  lawlessness  in  an  Antichrist.  St.  John  does 
not  appear  to  encourage  such  a  belief ;  but  he 
points  to  the  "  many  antichrists "  who  were 
plain  to  see  in  the  experience  of  the  Church ; 
and  amongst  them  he  signalizes  as  antichrists 
and  deceivers  one  particular  class  of  teachers 
who  opposed  the  belief  in  the  incarnation,  and 
he  would  stimulate  the  Christian  Church  to  a 
firm  and  deliberate  resistance  to  their  doctrine. 
Certainly  we  cannot  to-day  look  around  us 
and  doubt  that  for  us  also  there  are  many 
antichrists.  Those,  for  instance,  who  are  most 
keenly  democratic  to-day,  who  believe  that 
democracy  represents  the  divine  purpose,  are 
rendered  thereby  the  more  conscious  that  de- 
mocracy has  many  perils — that  it  needs  Christ 
if  it  is  not  to  fail  and  disappoint  us  ;  and  that 
it  is  the  anti-Christian  forces  which  are  the  real 


124  St.  John's  Epistles 

enemies  of  democracy.  Certainly  there  are 
many  antichrists.  But  it  is  false  doctrine  that 
St.  John  has  specially  in  view.  He  most  de- 
liberately and  solemnly  warns  us  that  Chris- 
tianity is  a  religion  which  involves  a  specific 
intellectual  position — the  belief,  in  particular, 
that  the  eternal  Word  or  Son  of  God,  Himself 
God,  was  made  flesh ;  that  is,  was  personally 
incarnate  in  Jesus  Christ :  and  that  the  denial 
of  this  is  antichrist.  We  are  so  loath  to-day 
positively  to  reject  any  doctrine — we  are  so 
anxious  "  to  hear  what  can  be  said  on  both 
sides  " — that  any  real  intellectual  decision  is 
very  difficult  for  us.  We  need,  then,  seriously 
to  consider  the  deliberate  but  decisive  judgements 
of  St.  John,  as  indeed  of  St.  Paul  and  of  the 
Church,  on  fundamental  questions.  There  are 
certain  questions  on  which  the  Church  cannot 
be  neutral,  for  its  life  is  at  stake.  It  must 
pronounce  sentence.  It  must  say  deliberately, 
"  This  is  antichrist." 

3.  But  what  is  the  meaning  of  "  a  last  hour  "  ? 
The  presence  of  these  antichrists,  St.  John 
says,  is  the  sign  of  a  "  last  hour."  (He  does 
not  write  "  the  last  hour,"  but  ''  a  last  hour." 
This  can  hardly  be  unintentional.)    This  ex- 


The  antichrists  125 


presses  tlie  belief  already  alluded  to  that  "  the 
day  of  the  Lord  '* — that  is,  the  day  of  the  victory 
of  good  and  of  God,  would  be  preceded  by  a 
period  of  specially  hot  conflict.  This  would  be 
"  the  last  hour ''  of  the  world  preceding  the 
dawning  of  the  new  "  day/'  And  every  day 
of  judgement  on  a  corrupt  civilization,  every 
"  day  of  the  Son  of  Man,"  would  in  like  manner 
be  preceded  by  a  "  last  hour ""  of  intense  conflict. 
Thus  there  may  be  many  "  days  of  the  Son  of 
Man ""  and  many  "  last  hours,''  and  it  is  quite 
possible  that  this  is  definitely  in  St.  John's 
mind,  and  that  he  does  not  mean  to  insist  that 
the  end  of  the  world  is  close  at  hand;  though 
he,  probably  with  the  rest  of  the  apostolic 
Church,  had  so  believed  in  earlier  days,  through 
a  misunderstanding  (as  I  thinlc)  of  our  Lord's 
meaning.  It  is  very  difficult  to  deal  with  a 
subject  of  much  controversy  in  a  few  words. 
But  I  think  the  truth  is  this. 

Our  Lord  quite  deliberately  and  solemnly 
pronounced  judgement  on  Jerusalem,  and  he 
did  this  in  the  manner  of  the  ancient  prophets, 
who  threw  their  prophecies  of  judgement  against 
the  world-powers  upon  the  background  of 
physical  convulsions.     So  our  Lord  threw  the 


126  St.  John's  Efistles 

judgement  over  Jerusalem  on  the  background 
of  physical  convulsions.  All  His  words  in  the 
apocalyptic  discourse  about  darkened  lumin- 
aries, and  falling  stars,  and  quaking  nature 
(St.  Mark  xiii.  24-6)  are  quotations  from  the 
ancient  prophets.  Now  I  believe  that  all  our 
Lord's  assertions  of  the  end,  as  coming  within 
the  generation  which  heard  His  words,  had  a 
definite  reference  to  the  judgement  on  Jerusalem, 
though  they  were  partly  misunderstood.  I 
believe  also  that  our  Lord  did  truly  (as  repre- 
sented in  other  utterances  in  the  Gospels)  warn 
the  disciples  against  imagining  that  they  could 
know  the  times  and  the  seasons  of  the  divine 
judgements,  and  used  language  about  the  uni- 
versal preaching  of  the  Gospel  and  the  gradual 
diffusion  of  His  teaching  and  of  God's  kingdom 
which  was  inconsistent  with  any  rapid  end  of 
the  world :  and  that  He  solemnly  confessed 
that  He,  though  He  was  the  Son,  did  not  (in 
His  mortal  state)  know  the  day  or  the  hour — 
i.e.  did  not  have  the  m^ap  of  the  future  spread 
before  His  human  mind.  Thus  I  believe  that 
He  neither  deceived  His  disciples  nor  spread 
the  future  before  them ;  but  (1)  definitely 
foretold  one  "  day  of  the  Son  of  Man,''  one 


The  antichrists  127 


"  day  of  judgement "  within  their  own  genera- 
tion— that  is,  the  judgement  on  Jerusalem,  and 
threw  this  on  the  background  of  final  physical 
catastrophe,  a  background  which  is  no  doubt 
symbolical  and  traditional  but  represents  a 
reality ;  (2)  led  them  to  expect  a  similar  day 
of  judgement — ''  one  of  the  days  of  the  Son  of 
Man '' — wherever  they  should  see  an  evil  in- 
stitution or  corrupt  civilization  showing  its 
signs  of  rottenness :  "  Wherever  the  carcase  is, 
there  will  the  eagles  be  gathered  together '' ; 
(3)  maintained  in  their  minds  the  belief  in  a  last 
great  day,  which  shall  be  the  end  of  this  present 
world  and  the  coming  of  the  new  heaven  and 
the  new  earth,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness. 

It  appears  to  be  of  the  essence  of  the  teaching 
about  the  end  which  we  can  ascribe  to  divine 
inspiration  to  be  both  symbolical  and  vague 
in  outline.  We  are  not  meant  to  learn  the 
future  beforehand,  except  in  its  moral  principles. 
Thus  the  disciples  mistook  our  Lord's  meaning, 
and  thought  themselves  justified  in  anticipating 
His  almost  immediate  return  and  the  end  of 
the  world.  But  this  was  never  more  than  an 
expectation.  It  was  never  part  of  their  faith. 
Thus  when  Jerusalem  fell  and  the  end  did  not 


128  St.  John's  Epistles 

come,  they  suffered,  apparently,  no  great  shock. 
When  John  saw  the  vision  of  the  Apocalypse, 
the  day  of  judgement  on  the  new  adversary,  the 
persecuting  empire  of  Eome,  was  shown  him 
as  being  both  certain  and  speedy,  and  again 
this  act  of  divine  judgement  was  thrown  upon 
the  tremendous  background  of  the  end  of  the 
world.  Yet  if  St.  John  had  lived  long  enough 
to  see  the  judgement  on  Rome,  but  to  find  a 
new  age  dawning  and  the  end  of  the  world  still 
seemingly  as  far  off  as  ever,  I  believe  he  would 
have  suffered  no  shock,  but  would  still  have 
bidden  us  expect  and  call  for  the  judgements  of 
God  on  every  form  of  organized  wickedness, 
and  still  prepare  for  bitter  conflict  ("a  last 
hour ")  before  the  end  comes,  and  still  be 
prepared  for  a  new  lifetime  of  the  present 
world.  Certainly  we  live  to-day  in  the  midst 
of  the  signs  of  judgement  on  a  false  industrial 
civilization  and  a  false  nationalism.  Certainly 
it  is  a  *'  last  hour ""  of  conflict.  But  it  need 
not  be  the  end  of  the  world.  It  may  be  the 
dawning  of  a  new  and  better  age. 

4.  The  purpose  of  schisms  or  heresies  is  declared 
by  St.  Paul  (1  Cor.  xi.  19)  to  be  the  sifting  out 
in  the  face  of  day  of  the  true  from  the  false 


The  antichrists  129 


Christians.  So  here  St.  John  sees  the  signi- 
ficance of  the  Gnostic  schisms  in  the  proof  it 
affords  that  all  who  are  Christians  formally  are 
not  Christians  really  (ver.  19).  What  St.  Au- 
gustine calls  "  the  true  body  of  Christ "  consists 
of  those  who  belong  both  to  the  body  of  the 
Church  and  to  its  spirit.  And  it  is  only  by  a 
sifting  probation  that  it  becomes  evident  who 
they  are. 

5.  The  Unction  from  the  Holy  One  is  the  Holy 
Spirit.  So  St.  Paul  had  already  called  the 
gift  of  the  Spirit  as  given  in  the  Church  (2  Cor. 
i.  21).  It  means  that  we  share  with  "  Christ/' 
the  Anointed  One,  in  the  same  gift.  At  the 
same  time,  St.  John  tells  us,  Christ  is  for  us  the 
source  of  the  gift.  He  is  "  the  Holy  One  '"  by 
whom  the  gift  is  bestowed  (c/.  John  vi.  69, 
Apoc.  iii.  7,  and  John  xvi.  7).  And  just  as  in 
the  Gospel  the  Paraclete  is  especially  viewed 
as  "  the  Spirit  of  truth,''  who  guides  into  all  the 
truth  and  reveals  Christ  as  He  truly  is  and 
recalls  His  words,  so  it  is  here  in  the  Epistle. 
The  result  of  His  coming  into  their  hearts  is 
that  they  "all  know"  (rather  than  "they 
know  all  things  "),  and  all  can  and  must  test 
and  discriminate  by  an  inward  criterion   true 


130  St.  John's  Epistles 

teaching  from  false,  and  hold  fast  with  a  personal 
conviction  to  the  original  Gospel,  as  being  the 
truth.  This  is  very  strongly  affirmed  in  this 
passage. 

Certainly  St.  John  would  not  tolerate  the 
Eomanist  division  of  the  Church  into  "the  teach- 
ing Church  " — i.e.  the  priesthood — and  "  the 
Church  which  learns '' — i.e.  the  laity  which  simply 
receives  from  its  teachers  what  it  is  to  believe. 
*'  Ye  need  not,"  he  says,  "  that  any  one  teach 
you.''  Ye  have  within  yourselves  a  better 
teacher.  We  must  acknowledge  at  the  same 
time  that  St.  John,  while  he  says  this,  is  at  the 
very  moment  giving  very  markedly  dogmatic  in- 
struction. If  we  are  to  interpret  him  reasonably 
we  shall  recognize  the  teaching  function  of  the 
Church  and  its  officers,  but  recognize  also  that 
the  truth  is  committed  to  the  whole  body  and 
to  every  member  of  it  who  receives  the  Spirit 
of  truth;  and  the  power  of  testing  what  is 
currently  taught  belongs,  or  should  belong, 
to  every  adult  Christian.  This  freedom  of 
inquiry,  which  is  the  spirit  of  the  claim  for  an 
"  open  Bible,"  makes  the  "  teaching  office  "  of 
the  Church  or  the  official  priesthood  a  very 
different  thing  from  what  it  becomes  if  it  is 


The  antichrists  131 


unregulated  by  the  free   inquiry  and  criticism 
of  the  whole  body  of  the  faithful. 

The  "  anointing  "  of  Christians  is  described 
by  St.  John  as  something  which  '*  they  re- 
ceived '"  on  a  certain  occasion.  The  reference 
is,  I  think  there  is  no  doubt,  to  what  we  call 
Confirmation  or  "  the  laying  on  of  hands.'* 
St.  John,  we  remember,  was  in  the  earliest  days 
of  the  Church  **  sent  down ''  with  St.  Peter 
by  the  Church  at  Jerusalem  to  "  confirm''  the 
newly  converted  and  baptized  Samaritans  ;  and, 
as  far  as  we  know,  the  gift  of  the  Spirit  which 
gives  to  each  member  of  the  body  his  full 
franchise — both  his  full  spiritual  endowment 
and  his  share  in  the  kingship  and  priesthood 
of  God  which  belongs  to  the  Church — has  been 
from  the  first  sacramentally  conceived ;  that 
is  to  say,  it  has  been  regarded  as  normally  con- 
veyed through  the  outward  ceremony  of  the 
laying  on  of  hands.  Early  in  the  Church's  life, 
partly  in  consequence  of  St.  John's  words, 
anointing  with  oil  was  added  to  the  laying  on 
of  hands  and  became  part  of  the  ceremony  of 
Christian  initiation.  But  it  is  not  probable 
that  it  was  in  use  in  St.  John's  day.  I  may 
quote  Tertullian's  words  about  the  ceremony 
10 


132  St.  John's  Epistles 

as  it  was  in  Hs  day,  a.d.  200  :  "  When  we  come 
out  of  the  font  we  are  anointed  with  the  blessed 
unction  which  comes  from  the  discipline  of  the 
old  covenant  under  which  they  used  to  be 
anointed  with  oil  to  the  priesthood.  .  .  .  After- 
wards the  hand  is  laid  upon  us  by  benediction 
invoking  and  inviting  the  Holy  Spirit." 

6.  "If  he  shall  he  manifested."  Both  here 
and  in  iii.  2  St.  John  uses  this  rather  curious 
expression,  which  cannot  be  understood  to 
express  any  doubt  about  the  second  coming, 
but  only  an  uncertainty  as  to  the  time  of  its 
occurrence — "  if  (at  any  moment)  "  ;  cf.  John 
xiv.  3,  "  If  I  go  away  and  prepare  a  place 
for  you.''  The  "if"  in  these  cases  is  hardly 
distinguishable  from  "whenever." 


§  5.  1  JOHN  iii.  1-12 

THE  CHILDREN  OF  GOD  AND  OF  THE  DEVIL 

St.  John  has  been  speaking  of  the  conflict  which 
the  Church,  holding  the  faith  of  the  Incarnation, 
is  bound  to  maintain  with  the  antichrists  who 
seek  to  undermine  the  right  faith.  But  at  the 
end  of  the  paragraph  there  is  a  sharp  tran- 
sition. It  had  appeared  that  the  mark  of  the 
true  Church  was  right  belief.  Now  suddenly 
it  is  declared  that  righteousness— a  character 
like  Christ's — is  the  infallible  mark  of  the  new 
birth.  These  rapid  transitions  from  insistence 
on  orthodoxy  to  insistence  on  character  as  the 
one  essential  are  characteristic  of  St.  John. 
Of  this  something  more  will  be  said  later.  Now 
he  pursues  the  last  thought — of  righteousness 
as  the  mark  of  the  children  of  God.  It  is  no 
longer  the  conflict  between  truth  and  falsehood 
which  is  in  his  mind,  but  the  conflict  of  two 
kinds  of  society  based  respectively  on  righteous- 
ness and  sin. 

The  wonderful  love  of  the  Father  has  admitted 
us,  by  a   new  birth   from   Christ  (ii.  29),  into 

133 


134  St.  Johns  E'pistles 

the  position  of  children  of  God.  So  we  are 
called  and  so  we  have  found  ourselves  to  be. 
It  follows  that  the  world  which  refused  to 
recognize  Jesus  Christ  will  refuse  to  recognize 
us,  because  in  our  sonship  to  God  we  are  like 
Him  in  character.  We  are  like  Him  in  this 
world  as  being  children  of  God.  And  if  there 
lies  before  us  a  more  splendid  future  when  Christ 
shall  have  come  in  glory,  and  if  our  future  con- 
dition has  not  yet  been  revealed  to  us,  yet  this 
at  least  we  know  about  it,  that  it  will  still  be 
a  condition  of  likeness  to  Him.  We  shall  see 
Him  as  He  is  ;  and  none  can  so  see  Him  without 
being  like  Him.  Every  one,  therefore,  who  is 
inspired  with  the  hope  of  eternal  fellowship 
with  Christ,  must  have  one  main  motive  in  life 
— to  become  like  Him,  to  purify  himself  even 
as  Christ  is  pure.  But  this  involves  a  per- 
manent antagonism  to  sin.  For  what  is  sin  ? 
It  is  lawlessness.  God  made  the  world  to 
express  a  certain  order  and  law  in  all  its  parts. 
Upon  every  creature  is  impressed  the  law  of  its 
being.  Only  to  created  spirits,  including  man, 
was  given  the  fateful  gift  of  freedom,  involving 
the  opportunity  for  rebelhon  and  lawlessness. 
This  is  sin.    All  sin  is  violation  of  law,  and 


TJie  children  of  God  135 

there  is  no  violation  of  law  except  through  the 
rebellion  of  free  spirits.  Sin  and  lawlessness 
are  co-extensive  terms.  In  antagonism  to  this 
principle  of  sin  Christ  was  manifested.  Himself 
sinless,  He  was  to  expiate  and  take  away  sins. 
And  between  Him  and  sin  there  can  be  no  kind 
of  fellowship.  To  abide  in  Him  means  not  to 
sin  :  to  sin,  means  that  we  have  had  no  vision 
of  Him  nor  knowledge  of  Him.  v 

There  is  this  root  antagonism  :  and  it  is 
with  regard  to  this  that  St.  John  feels  that 
there  are  so  many  who  would  deceive  his  "  little 
children" — his  immature  and  easily  misled 
disciples.  There  are,  in  fact,  two  sonships 
between  which  we  must  choose — the  sonship  to 
God  in  Christ,  of  which  the  essential  principle 
is  righteousness  like  Christ's  righteousness,  and 
the  sonship  to  the  devil,  of  which  the  essential 
character  is  sin  and  lawlessness.  Sin  has  been 
from  the  beginning,  before  ever  man  was,  the 
characteristic  of  the  devil,  and  every  one  who 
sins  belongs  to  him.  To  destroy  all  that  the 
devil  has  done— to  bring  his  seeming  kingdom 
to  dissolution— is  the  very  object  for  which 
Christ  was  manifested. 

We  must  recognize,  then,  the  fundamental 


136  St.  Join's  Epistles 

antagonism.  In  being  regenerated  and  made 
children  of  God  we  have  received  the  seed  of 
a  new  life  which  makes  sin  impossible.  Sin  is 
the  outward  and  visible  mark  of  the  children 
of  the  devil,  as  righteousness  of  the  children  of 
God.  And  this  righteousness  is  no  mere  ab- 
stinence from  evil  but  a  positive  thing,  in  par- 
ticular a  positive  love  of  each  one  who  belongs 
to  the  brotherhood.  So  we  were  taught  from 
the  beginning ;  just  as,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
children  of  the  devil,  since  the  days  of  Cain,  as 
they  have  been  themselves  sinful,  so  also  have 
been  inspired  by  a  jealousy  of  good  in  others 
which  has  made  them  hate  their  brethren,  as  Cain 
hated  his  brother  Abel  and  became  his  murderer. 

Behold  wliat  manner  of  love  the  Father  hath  bestowed 
upon  us,  that  we  should  be  called  children  of  God  :  and 
such  we  are.  For  this  cause  the  world  knoweth  us  not, 
because  it  knew  him  not.  Beloved,  now  are  we  children 
of  God,  and  it  is  not  yet  made  manifest  what  we  shall  be. 
We  know  that,  if  he  shall  be  manifested,  we  shall  be  like 
him  ;  for  we  shall  see  him  even  as  he  is.  And  every  one 
that  hath  this  hope  set  on  him  purifieth  himself,  even  as 
he  is  pure.  Every  one  that  doeth  sin  doeth  also  lawless- 
ness :  and  sin  is  lawlessness.  And  ye  know  that  he  was 
manifested  to  take  away  sins  ;  and  in  him  is  no  sin.  Who- 
soever abideth  in  him  sinneth  not :  whosoever  sinneth 
hath  not  seen  him,  neither  knoweth  him.  My  little 
children,   let  no  man  lead   you   astray :    he  that  doeth 


and  the  children  of  the  devil  137 

righteousness  is  righteous,  even  as  he  is  righteous  :  he  that 
doeth  sin  is  of  the  devil ;  for  the  devil  sinneth  from  the 
beginning.  To  this  end  was  the  Son  of  God  manifested, 
that  he  might  destroy  the  works  of  the  devil.  Whosoever 
is  begotten  of  God  doeth  no  sin,  because  his  seed  abideth 
in  him  :  and  he  cannot  sin,  because  he  is  begotten  of  God. 
In  this  the  children  of  God  are  manifest,  and  the  children 
of  the  devil :  whosoever  doeth  not  righteousness  is  not  of 
God,  neither  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother.  For  this  is 
the  message  which  ye  heard  from  the  beginning,  that  we 
should  love  one  another  :  not  as  Cain  was  of  the  evil  one, 
and  slew  his  brother.  And  wherefore  slew  he  him  ?  Be- 
cause his  works  were  evil,  and  his  brother's  righteous. 

1.  Sonshij)  and  heaven.— The  love  of  the 
Father  is  a  self- communicating  love.  He  is 
not  content  with  showing  it.  He  has  also 
**  given ''  it  as  a  gift  to  us,  by  the  Spirit.  The 
true  mark  of  the  sonship  into  which  we  are 
called  is  to  live  in  the  possession  and  exercise 
of  the  divine  love.  "  As  many  as  are  led  by 
the  Spirit  of  God,  they  are  the  sons  of  God."' 
St.  John,  however,  never  uses  St.  Paul's  word 
**  sons.'"  He  always  calls  us  "  children '"  of 
God,  a  word  suggestive  of  our  being  only  at  the 
beginning  of  our  spiritual  life— still  quite  un- 
developed, as  he  goes  on  to  intimate  :  f or  "  never 
yet  was  it  made  manifest " — not  even  in  the 
appearances  of  our  Lord  after  His  resurrection — 
of  what  sort  we  shall  be  in  the  perfected  life  of 


138  St.  Johns  Epistles 

heaven.  This  only  we  can  be  sure  of,  that  as 
likeness  to  Christ  is  the  mark  of  the  children  of 
God  even  now,  so  much  more  will  it  be  in  heaven. 
There  we  shall  be  like  Him  "  because  we  shall 
see  Him  as  He  is '' — which  phrase  probably 
covers  both  possible  meanings,  viz.  that  only 
those  who  are  like  Him  can  see  Him  as  He  is, 
and  also  that  the  vision  of  Him  will  transform 
us  more  and  more  into  His  likeness.  This  is 
the  essence  of  heavenly  perfection,  to  see  Christ 
as  He  is  in  His  glory. 

Beyond  this  fundamental  thought  the  silence 
of  the  New  Testament  about  the  world  beyond 
is  most  remarkable.  In  all  those  respects  in 
which  it  has  a  direct  bearing  on  present  conduct — 
in  all  those  respects  in  which  faith  needs  to  be 
made  vigorous,  and  hope  sure,  and  love  active, 
and  repentance  thorough — we  are  informed 
about  the  eternal  issues  of  life.  But  with  regard 
to  the  multitude  of  questions  which  curiosity 
suggests  to  us  about  heaven  and  hell  and  about 
the  state  of  waiting — whether,  for  example, 
there  is  purgatory  for  the  imperfect — there  is 
singularly  little,  we  may  almost  say  nothing,  to 
be  gathered  from  the  pages  of  the  New  Testament. 
And  this  silence  is  so  marked  that  we  are  forced 


TTie  children  of  God  139 

to  conclude  that  it  is  intentional.  We  are  not 
meant  to  know  what  the  after-life  is  to  be 
like,  and  it  is  probably  inexpressible  in  terms 
of  our  present  intellectual  faculties.  We  must 
be  content  with  childish  figures  and  metaphors. 
Our  present  business  is  to  show  what  the  life 
of  sonship  can  be  on  earth. 

2.  Regeneration. — The  principle  of  regenera- 
tion is  stated  by  St.  John  in  the  prologue  to  his 
Gospel  thus :  In  a  world  of  sin  and  darkness 
there  were  yet  those  who  received  the  true 
light,  which  is  Jesus  Christ.  "  And  as  many 
as  received  him,  to  them  gave  he  the  right  to 
become  children  of  God,  even  to  them  that 
believe  on  his  name ;  which  were  born  not  of 
blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the 
will  of  a  man,  but  of  God."  ^     And  again,  he 

^  John  i.  12.  There  is,  however,  a  very  early  reading  of  this 
passage  which  is  found  in  some  of  the  Fathers,  and  is  accepted 
as  original  by  some  scholars,  including  Dr.  Inge:  see  his  Plotinus 
(Longmans),  vol.  ii.  p.  207.  According  to  this  reading,  the 
words  after  "  believe  on  his  name  "  would  run :  "  who  una  born 
not  of  bloods,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  a  man, 
but  of  God."  The  words  would  then  describe  the  manner  of 
our  Lord's  birth,  not  of  the  mixture  of  human  seeds  (for  the 
word  translated  "  blood  "  is  plural  in  the  Greek),  nor  of  human 
appetite,  nor  of  the  will  of  a  man  (a  husband),  but  of  God. 
According  to  the  text  as  it  stands  in  almost  all  the  JISS.  and  in 
our  versions,  it  describes  the  supernatural  regeneration  of  the 


140  St.  John's  Efistles 

reports  our  Lord  as  saying  to  Nicodemus, 
"  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  thee,  Except  a  man 
be  born  anew  [or  "  from  above  "\  he  cannot 
see  the  kingdom  of  God.  .  .  .  Except  a  man  be 
born  of  water  and  the  Spirit,  he  cannot  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God."  ^  These  passages 
mean  that  so  perverted  is  the  whole  world  by 
sin  that,  though  sonship  to  God  is  the  purpose 
of  our  creation,  it  must  be  imparted  as  a  new 
gift  of  God  to  each  man  in  Christ  by  His  Spirit 
and  the  latter  implies,  what  the  whole  New 
Testament  suggests,  that  baptism,  the  ceremony 
of  incorporation  into  Christ  and  into  His  Church, 
is  the  instrument  of  our  regeneration.  In  the 
truest  and  deepest  sense  all  the  baptized  into 
Christ  have  in  themselves  the  principle  of  the 
new  birth  and  "  their  seed  abideth  in  them.'' 
We  may  feel  sure  St.  John  would  not  have 
denied  this  doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration. 

children  of  God,  but  in  terms  suggestive  of  the  New  Birth  on 
which  our  regeneration  is  based,  i.e.  our  Lord's  birth  of  a  virgin : 
see  Dr.  Chase,  Belief  and  Creed  (Macmillan),  pp.  67  flf. ;  also 
Zahn,  Einleiiung,  ii.  p,  504  f.,  as  cited  by  Latimer  Jackson, 
describes  St.  John  in  this  passage  as  so  portraying  the  origin  of 
the  children  of  God,  after  the  pattern  picture  of  the  only  "  Son 
of  God  "  who  is  such  in  the  fullest  sense,  that  the  reader  will 
be  at  once  reminded  of  a  begetting  and  birth  without  carnal 
impiilse  or  the  will  of  a  man.  ^  John  iii.  3,  5. 


and  the  cJiildren  of  the  devil  141 

Nevertheless,  it  is  most  necessary  for  those 
who  believe  it  to  notice  the  insistence  with 
which  St.  John  speaks  of  regeneration  as  neces- 
sarily involving  holiness.  Of  the  baptized  who 
have  no  knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  their 
baptism  or  show  no  respect  to  it,  he  could  not 
bear  to  speak  as,  in  the  real  sense,  "  begotten 
of  God.''  To  be  sons  of  God,  he  would  tell  us, 
involves  co-operation  on  our  part  with  the  act 
of  God  in  us.  Thus,  St.  John  would  be  as  far 
as  possible  from  allowing  us  to  treat  baptism 
as  a  charm.  He  would  not,  I  think,  sanction 
our  struggling  to  "  get  people  baptized  "  with 
little  or  no  regard  to  their  dispositions ;  nor 
surely  would  he  sanction  the  baptism  of  infants 
except  with  a  very  real  guarantee  for  their 
being  brought  up  to  understand  the  meaning 
of  what  had  been  bestowed  upon  them. 

3.  Sin  is  lawlessness. — There  have  been  many 
attempts  to  explain  sin — as  that  it  is  an  inevit- 
able accompaniment  of  material  life,  matter  in 
itself  degrading  the  spirit  which  is  imprisoned 
in  it ;  or  that  it  is  the  result  of  imperfection,  a 
relic  of  barbarism  or  a  former  purely  animal 
condition  ;  or  that  it  is  due  to  ignorance.  Now, 
it  is  quite  true  that  our  material  bodies,  especially 


142  St.  John's  Epistles 

as  tliey  have  come  to  be  under  tlie  long  pre- 
valence of  sin,  may  and  do  press  us  to  sin  and 
minister  to  sin ;  it  is  quite  true  that  sin  may 
be  due  to  animal  impulses ;  it  is  quite  true, 
once  more,  that  ignorance  promotes  sin.  But 
Christianity  has  it  for  one  of  its  central  and 
essential  doctrines  that  sin,  strictly  speaking, 
is  none  of  these  things  and  does  not  consist  in 
any  external  condition.  It  is  rebellion — the 
rebellion  of  created  wills  against  their  creator. 
God  made  the  world  for  law  and  order,  and 
impressed  on  each  element  or  type  of  creation 
its  own  proper  law  of  being.  But  He  gave  to 
created  spirits  the  fateful  gift  of  freedom,  which 
carries  with  it  the  possibility  of  rebellion. 
And  through  the  whole  expanse  of  nature  there 
is  no  lawlessness  except  where  rebel  wills  have 
used  their  freedom  to  refuse  the  will  of  God. 
That  lawlessness  is  sin  ;  and  sin,  strictly  speak- 
ing, begins  and  ends  with  lawlessness  or 
rebellion.^  There  is  no  lawlessness  but  sin  and 
no  sin  that  is  not  lawlessness. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  to  consider  what  is  meant  by  original 
or  racial  sin,  i.e.  an  inherited  tendency  to  evil.  Suffice  it  to  say 
here  that  only  in  so  far  as  the  will  accepts  the  tendency  and 
makes  it  its  own,  does  it  become  strictly  sin. 


The  children  of  God  143 

Thus  it  is  a  delusion  to  speak  of  sin  as  if  it  were 
a  survival  of  animal  instinct,  or  as  if  civilization 
tended  to  outgrow  it.  Sin  is  a  spiritual  thing — 
a  rebellion  of  wall  which  appears  in  refined  and 
intellectual  as  well  as  in  sensual  and  animal 
forms.  Developed  civilizations  are  no  less  sinful 
than  barbarisms.  Our  Lord  will  not  allow  us 
to  believe  that  sensual  sins — fornication  or 
violence — are  more  sinful  than  pride  or  avarice 
or  uncharitableness.  Wherever,  then,  is  the 
refusal  of  God,  of  His  truth,  of  His  righteousness, 
of  His  love,  there  is  sin,  and  as  sin  is  always 
lawlessness,  so  it  is  always  the  source  of  disorder 
and  weakness  in  the  world. 

Again,  it  is  misleading  to  say  (though  great 
men  have  said  it)  that  sin  is  purely  negative. 
It  is  no  doubt  true  —in  the  sense  that  there  is 
not  in  the  world  any  evil  substance,  and  that 
sin  is  only  the  misuse  of  things  or  faculties  in 
themselves  good.  But  if  the  essence  of  sin  is 
rebellion  or  the  assertion  of  self-will,  then  surely 
it  is  in  itself  a  very  positive  thing. 

4.  He  was  manifested  to  take  away  sins. — Just 
because  sin  is  not  any  essential  quality  of 
nature  but  only  a  rebellion  of  wills,  so  it  is 
remediable    by    the    conversion    of    wills    into 


144  St.  John's  Epistles 

harmony  with  the  purpose  of  God.  Let  but 
the  will  be  right  and  the  whole  nature  will  be 
in  time  subdued  to  order.  Sin  is  remediable. 
Thus  our  Lord  was  manifested  to  take  away 
sins.  He  was  "  the  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh 
away  the  sin  of  the  world.''  ^  That  means  that 
He  both  expiates  it  and  removes  it.  Sinless 
Himself,  He  bore  all  the  burden  that  was  laid 
upon  Him  by  human  sin,  into  the  heart  of  which 
He  came  in  becoming  man.  As  the  victim  of 
pure  love  He  converted  all  that  burden  into  the 
material  of  His  perfect  sacrifice.  So  He  ex- 
piated sin  and  inaugurated  a  new  manhood 
free  from  all  taint  and  flaw  of  sin.  And  this 
new  manhood,  by  the  power  of  His  Spirit, 
becomes  the  source  and  ground  of  moral  victory 
to  all  who  believe  on  Him  and  become  united 
to  Him.  So  was  He  manifested  in  fullest  power 
to  deal  effectively  both  with  the  guilt  and 
the  power  of  sin  in  general  and  of  all  sins  in 
particular.  There  is  no  sin  for  which  He  can- 
not and  will  not  supply  the  remedy. 

5.  "  The   devil   sinneth   from   the   beginning," 

'  The  works  of  ike  devil,"  "  The  children  of  the 

devil." — Like   the   rest   of   the   writers   of   the 

1  John  i.  29. 


and  the  children  of  the' devil  145 

New  Testament  St.  John  has  no  doubt  that 
behind  the  rebel  wills  of  men  there  is  a  master- 
rebel,  who  sinned  before  they  were  in  being 
("from  the  beginning"),  and  who,  as  the 
enemy  of  all  good,  is  called  the  devil,  the  slan- 
derer, or  Satan,  the  adversary.  It  seems  to 
me  that  our  Lord's  own  language  in  the  same 
sense  is  so  deliberate  and  intense  that  it  is 
impossible  to  accept  Him  as  a  perfect  spiritual 
teacher  without  accepting  this  element  in  His 
teaching.  And  it  seems  to  me  also  to  make  a 
great  practical  difference  in  our  spiritual  outlook 
on  life  if  we  accept  this  as  a  fact ;  and,  moreover, 
to  be  in  accordance  with  the  deepest  spiritual 
experience.  But  instead  of  using  words  of  my 
own,  I  will  quote  the  words  of  one  of  our  greatest 
recent  prophets,  Frederick  Denison  Maurice,^ 
who  was  brought  up  among  Unitarians  and  in 
disbelief  of  the  existence  of  the  devil. 

I  know  that  I  did  not  learn  this  doctrine  [about  the 
devil]  by  the  precepts  of  men.  I  was  not  taught  it  in 
my  childhood.  Those  I  reverenced,  and  still  reverence, 
considered  it  a  fable.  As  I  grew  up  I  felt  the  same  motives 
to  retain  that  opinion  which  act  upon  many  of  my  con- 
temporaries. The  notion  of  a  devil  was  associated  in  my 
mind  with  many  superstitions  which  science  had  confuted. 

^  Lectures  on  the  Epistles  of  St.  John,  xii. 


146  St.  John's  Efistles 

It  was  held  by  vulgar  people,  among  whom  I  did  not  wish 
to  be  reckoned.  It  was  quite  possible,  if  I  cared  for  that, 
to  pass  muster  with  the  orthodox  and  respectable  though 
I  was  sceptical  on  this  point.  But  there  are  some  things 
which  are  more  terrible  than  being  confounded  with  vulgar 
people.  It  is  more  terrible  not  to  be  honest  with  one's 
self.  It  is  more  terrible  to  think  that  one  is  given  over 
hopelessly  to  work  iniquity.  It  is  more  terrible  to  be  cut 
oi?  from  all  fellowship  with  human  beings,  if  they  are 
vulgar. 

Then  he  describes  the  various  efforts  he  made 
to  explain  evil  otherwise : 

These  evil  thoughts — did  they  originate  with  me  ?  I 
could  not  say  so  to  please  any  theorist,  or  to  get  credit 
for  ever  so  much  liberality  and  wisdom.  I  might  have 
rejected  the  thoughts,  but  they  were  presented  to  me.  I 
may  bewilder  myself — all  men  have  bewildered  themselves 
at  some  time  or  other — by  saying,  "  I  shuffled  the  cards ; 
I  played  both  hands  "  ;  but  it  will  not  do.  It  is  not  a  fair 
representation  of  the  facts.  To  a  man  in  earnest  it  is  a 
quite  maddening  explanation  of  them.  Did  they,  then, 
originate  with  some  other  mortal  ?  It  is  the  same  story 
again.  If  a  man  is  making  his  confession  on  his  deathbed, 
he,  too,  will  speak  of  the  thought  having  been  in  some  way 
offered  to  him.  He  knows  then  that  this  does  not  make 
the  case  better  for  him,  but  he  uses  the  language  because 
it  is  the  only  natural  language. 

Then  he  speaks  of  the  importance  of  this  feeling : 

It  is  no  fancy.  You  know  that  it  is  what  we  are  all 
tempted  to  do  continually  [that  is,  to  make  excuses  for 
ourselves  on  the  ground  of  our  nature].     But  if  we  heartily 


The  children  of  God  147 

believed  that  we  had  a  common  enemy  plotting  against 
us  all,  making  use  of  every  man's  peculiar  gift  or  charac- 
teristic which  is  meant  for  his  blessing,  to  work  his  ruin, 
accusing  our  Father  in  heaven  to  us  all,  accusing  every 
brother  to  another,  persuading  each  of  us  that  he  is  not  a 
child  of  God,  that  he  does  not  belong  to  a  family  of  brothers, 
should  we  indulge  this  miserable  tenderness  of  that  which 
is  preying  upon  our  own  vitals  ;  should  we  indulge  our 
cruelty  by  mocking  the  diseases  and  derangements  of  our 
brothers  ?  Should  we  not  feel  that  we  have  a  common 
battle  to  fight ;  that  each  man  who  stood  his  own  ground 
firmly  was  doing  something  for  all  against  the  common 
enemy,  that  each  might  aid  some  other,  even  by  his  wounds 
and  his  falls  ? 

Granted  this,  we  understand  quite  well  what 
St.  John  means  by  "  the  works  of  the  devil.'" 
It  is  the  devil  w^ho  by  his  age-long  activity 
gives  a  certain  kingdom-like  consistency  to  evil 
and  builds  an  evil  "  world ''  over  against  the 
kingdom  of  God.  And  those  who  allow  them- 
selves to  be  the  servants  of  sin  become  "  his 
children."  But  the  whole  of  this  false  fabric 
is  to  pass  away.  Christ  was  manifested  to 
destroy,  or,  more  strictly,  to  "  dissolve ''  it. 
He  has  already  in  principle  dissolved,  and  is 
in  fact  to  dissolve,  the  "  works  of  the  devil.'" 

6.  "  Whosoever  abideth  in  him  sinneth  not ;  .  .  . 
he  that  doeiJi  sin  is  of  the  devil." — This  section  will 
11 


148  St.  John's  Efistles 


make  us  familiar  with  St.  John's  idealism.  He 
sees  things  in  their  fundamental  principles  and 
traces  out  the  working  of  these  principles,  free 
from  all  hindrances,  to  their  ultimate  results. 
So  he  exposes  to  light  each  tendency  as  it  is  in 
principle  and  in  its  extreme  issue.  So  he  deals 
with  the  good  and  evil  which  he  sees  around 
him.  So  he  paints  things  white  and  black — 
not  grey.  Thus  the  principle  of  goodness  is 
sonship  to  God.  It  is  totally  incompatible  with 
any  sin.  It  is  the  purity  of  Christ.  It  wages 
with  sin  an  incessant  conflict  with  an  absolute 
mastery.  Sin,  on  the  other  hand,  is  pure  law- 
lessness. It  is  the  principle  of  the  devil.  All 
who  share  in  sin  are  the  children  of  the  devil. 
In  particular,  the  characteristic  of  the  children 
of  God  is  pure  love  of  the  brethren.  The 
characteristic  of  the  children  of  the  devil  is 
jealousy,  hatred,  and  murder.  So  the  children 
of  God  and  the  children  of  this  "  world  "  which 
"  lieth  in  the  evil  one  "  are  absolutely  distinct. 
Thus,  again,  in  the  preceding  paragraph,  he 
has  put  into  the  same  sharp  opposition  the 
faith  of  the  Church  and  the  lies  of  Antichrist. 
But  we  to-day  resent  this  method  of  St.  John's 
and  distrust  it — and  especially  our  "  intelligent 


and  the  children  of  the  devil  149 

people."  Tlie  world  is  a  very  mixed  place,  we 
say.  In  every  man  and  in  every  current  opinion 
good  and  evil,  truth  and  falsehood  are  mixed. 
There  is  a  soul  of  good  in  things  evil  and  of 
evil  in  things  good.  We  will  neither  give  an 
exclusive  approval  nor  an  exclusive  condemna- 
tion to  anything  ;  or,  rather,  with  a  benevolent 
optimism,  we  will  make  the  best  of  every 
tendency  and  entertain  the  hope  that  nothing 
is  really  bad  or  utterly  false,  but  is  part  of  the 
great  mixed  movement  which  has  God  for  its 
goal.  This  is  called  charity,  or  appreciative 
sympathy,  or  tolerance,  or  broad-mindedness. 
But  we  know  enough  of  ourselves  to  know  the 
fatal  result  of  such  tolerance  or  broad-minded- 
ness. It  eats  at  the  roots  of  decision.  It  makes 
us  acquiesce  in  things  as  they  are.  It  paralyses 
moral  action.  It  does  this,  St.  John  would  tell 
us,  because  it  is  false.  Tendencies  are  not  all 
fundamentally  good.  They  are  not  all  moving 
to  the  same  good  end.  We  are  not  all  going  to 
the  same  place.  There  are  two  tendencies ; 
two  standards ;  two  kingdoms  between  which 
we  have  to  choose  ;  and  our  wisdom  is  to  see 
each  in  its  essential  nature,  in  its  ultimate  issue, 
and  under  its  real  leader — Christ  or  the  devil ; 


150  St.  Johns  Epistles 

Christ  or  Antichrist.    Of    course  St.   John    is 
no  dualist.    He  of  all  men  knows  that  there  is 
only  one  God — that  the  devil  is  only  a  rebel 
spirit,  and  that  the  kingdom  of  evil  is  destined 
only  for  final  overthrow.    Nevertheless,  in  our 
existing   world   evil  is   alive   and   active,    and 
stands  to  be  overcome.    Again,  St.  John  knows 
that  the  children  of  God  are  not  absolutely 
true  to  their  divine  Father  and  do,  in  fact, 
commit  sins.    So  he  reiterates  in  this  Epistle. 
He  gives  no  real  support  to  the  arrogant  claims 
of  sinless  perfection.    But  Christians  who  sin 
"  forget  themselves.''    And  if  their  real  will  is 
right  they  can  recover  themselves.    Also,  there 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  he  would  recognize  a 
movement  for  good  in  the  heart  of  those  who  are, 
on  the  whole,  abandoned  to  sin.    But  at  the 
bottom   there   is    an   inevitable    choice.     "  Ye 
cannot  serve  God  and  mammon.''    Each  man 
at  bottom  adheres  to  the  kingdom  of  God  or 
the  kingdom  of  the  devil ;    and  our  wisdom  is 
to  unveil  the  true  principles  of  each  kingdom — 
the  real  meaning  of  truth  and  righteousness, 
and  the  real  meaning  of  sin  and  falsehood,  that 
we  may  cleave  to  the  one  and  hate  the  other. 
Finally,    the    special    characteristic    of    the 


The  children  of  God  151 

righteousness  of  Christ  and  His  kingdom  is 
active  love,  and  the  special  characteristic  of 
Satan's  kingdom  is  selfishness  and  the  conse- 
quent hatred  and  jealousy  of  what  threatens 
selfishness — that  is,  love.  So  we  get  our  point 
of  transition  to  the  next  paragraph. 


§  6.     1  JOHN  iii.   13-24 
THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORLD — LOVE    AND   HATE 

St.  John's  thouglit  is  still  running  on  the  hatred 
of  the  Church  on  the  part  of  the  world  which 
the  brethren  are  to  expect.  They  cannot  wonder 
that  it  should  be  so,  because  they  have  passed 
right  out  of  that  old  world— that  world  of  death 
— into  a  new  world — the  world  of  life.  And  the 
evidence  to  ourselves  of  having  passed  from  the 
one  world  to  the  other  is  that  we  find  ourselves 
loving  all  our  brethren  in  the  new  fellowship — 
actively  loving  all  sorts  of  men  and  women 
whom  naturally  we  should  have  disliked  and 
avoided.  Now,  inasmuch  as  love  is  the  only 
evidence  of  our  really  belonging  to  the  Church, 
it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that  we  should 
not  be  deceived  as  to  our  possessing  it.  Nega- 
tively, it  can  be  known  by  its  being  utterly 
incompatible  with  hatred  of  any  one  of  our 
brethren.  Hatred  in  principle  is  the  same  thing 
as  murder  :   it  is  murder  in  the  heart ;   and  the 

162 


The  church  and  the  world  153 

spirit  of  murder  utterly  excludes  from  the  true 
or  eternal  life,  of  which  it  is  the  essence  of  the 
Church  to  be  possessed.  Positively,  the  love 
of  the  brethren  must  be  unlimited  in  degree 
and  extent.  As  shown  to  us  in  Christ  it  meant 
the  surrender  of  His  life  for  us,  and  in  us,  too, 
it  must  be  nothing  less — we  ought  to  lay  down 
our  lives  for  the  brethren.  But  also — and  here 
it  can  be  more  frequently  tested — it  must 
extend  to  all  the  common  needs  of  life.  It  is 
idle  for  any  one  to  profess  to  have  the  love  of 
God  in  him  if,  when  he  sees  his  brother  in  want 
of  anything,  he  does  not  supply  his  necessities 
out  of  his  store  of  this  world's  goods,  but  closes 
to  him  the  avenues  of  his  heart  in  selfishness. 
For  love  is  not  a  matter  of  words,  nor  is  the 
tongue  its  proper  instrument,  but  it  is  practical 
and  real.  But  when  the  genuine  motive  of  our 
life  is  this  sort  of  love,  then  we  know  that  we 
belong  to  the  truth — that  is  the  real  world,  the 
world  of  God — and  though  we  are  very  far  from 
perfect,  yet  in  whatever  respect  we  feel  our 
conscience  condemn  us,  we  shall  reassure  our- 
selves that  we  are  right  with  God,  because 
God,  who  is  greater  than  our  hearts  and  who 
knows  everything,  assures  us  of  our  standing- 


154  St.  John's  Efisiles 

ground  before  Him  by  tlie  genuine  utter  love 
which,  is  our  motive.  And  if  we  are  not  self- 
condemned,  if  we  can  thus  rightly  reassure  our 
conscience,  w^e  can  stand  boldly  before  God  to 
speak  freely  to  Him  ;  and  we  can  depend  upon 
it  that  He  will  grant  all  our  requests,  because 
we  keep  His  commandments  and  do  what  pleases 
Him.  And  Hi^  commandment  ia— twofold.  It 
is .  a  commandment  of  .belief:^ that  we  should 
i_believe  the  revelation  jof  Himself  that  He  has 
given  in  Him  whom  we  must  own  as  Son  of 
God,  Jesus  the  Christ.  ,,  It  is  also  a  command- 
ment of  practice — that  we  should  love  one 
another  in  will  and  act,  just  as  He  bade  us. 
And  there  is  no  mistake  about  it — he  who  thus 
observes  God's  commandments  shares  in  God's 
life.  God  abides  in  him  and  he  abides  in 
God.  The  evidence  to  ourselves  of  this  divine 
indwelling  is  that  we  are  conscious  that  He  has 
given  us  His  Spirit. 

Marvel  not,  brethren,  if  the  world  hateth  you.  We 
know  that  we  have  passed  out  of  death  into  life,  because 
we  love  the  brethren.  He  that  loveth  not  abideth  in 
death.  Whosoever  hateth  his  brother  is  a  murderer  :  and 
ye  know  that  no  murderer  hath  eternal  life  abiding  in  him. 
Hereby  know  we  love,  because  he  laid  down  his  life  for 
us  :    and  we  ought  to  lay  down  our  lives  for  the  brethren. 


The  church  and  the  world  155 

But  whoso  hath  the  world's  goods,  and  beholdeth  his 
brother  in  need,  and  shutteth  up  his  compassion  from  him, 
how  doth  the  love  of  God  abide  in  him  1  My  little  children, 
let  us  not  love  in  word,  neither  with  the  tongue  ;  but  in 
deed  and  truth!  Hereby  shall  we  know  that  we  are  of  the 
truth,  and  shall  assure  our  heart  before  him,  whereinsoever 
our  heart  condemn  us  ;  because  God  is  greater  than  our 
heart,  and  knoweth  all  things.  Beloved,  if  our  heart 
condemn  us  not,  we  have  boldness  toward  God  ;  and 
whatsoever  we  ask,  we  receive  of  him,  because  we  keep 
his  commandments,  and  do  the  things  that  are  pleasing 
in  his  sight.  And  this  is  his  commandment,  that  we  should 
believe  in  the  name  of  his  Son  Jesus  Christ,  and  love  one 
another,  even  as  he  gave  us  commandment.  And  he  that 
keepeth  his  commandments  abideth  in  him,  and  he  in  him- 
And  hereby  we  know  that  he  abideth  in  us,  by  the  Spirit 
which  he  gave  us. 

1.  The  two  worlds. — If  we  consider  such  a 
passage  as  this  attentively,  the  experience  which 
it  represents  cannot  but  astonish  us.  As  we 
have  seen,  St.  John  paints  experience  very  black 
and  very  white  in  the  sharpest  contrast.  On 
the  one  hand,  there  is  the  experience  of  **  the 
world  " — a  world  made  up  of  "  the  lust  of  the 
flesh  and  the  lust  of  the  eyes  and  the  pride  of 
life"  :  a  lawless  world — a  world  of  death — the 
world  which  the  devil  rules.  He  fearlessly 
paints  it  in  these  black  colours,  as  also  St.  Paul 
does,  as  if  there  were  no  doubt  that  his  readers 


156  St.  John's  Epistles 

would  acknowledge  tliat  they  liad  so  found  it. 
On  tlie  other  hand,  sharply  distinguished  from 
it,  is  the  new  world  into  which  they  have  passed 
by  an  unmistakable  act  of  transition — the 
world  for  which  Christ  both  sets  the  example 
of  true  living  and  provides  by  His  sacrifice  the 
all-sufficient  redemption  from  the  old  tyranny 
of  sin  and  inbreathes  by  His  Spirit  the  power 
of  the  new  life.  And  of  this  new  life  the  supreme 
and  summary  test  is  the  "  love  of  the  brethren." 
About  the  true  quality  of  their  love  St.  John 
would  have  them  examine  themselves  narrowly. 
But  granted  that  it  is  genuine  and  unmistakable, 
he  would  have  them — in  spite  of  all  suggested 
scruples  of  conscience  suggested  by  their  failures 
and  sins — trust  it  utterly  as  the  sufficient 
evidence  of  their  fellowship  with  God  ;  for  where 
genuine  love  is,  God  is.  And  though  his  lan- 
guage suggests  the  need  of  admonition  and  the 
possibility  of  a  hypocritical  profession  of  Christ, 
yet  there  is  no  mistaking  his  fearless  appeal  to 
experience.  The  thing  was,  as  He  says,  "  true 
[or  real]  in  Christ  and  in  them.''  It  is  a  realized 
experience.  There  is  a  sentence  from  George 
Meredith's  preface  to  The  Tragic  Comedians  in 
which  he  speaks  as  if  this  sort  of  pure  love  did 


The  church  and  the  world  157 

not  exist  among  men.  "  Love  may  be  celestial 
fire  before  it  enters  into  the  system  of  mortals. 
It  will  tlien  take  tlie  character  of  its  place  of 
abode,  and  we  have  to  look  not  so  much  for  the 
pure  thing,  as  for  the  passion.'"  St.  John's 
experience  asserts  the  contrary.  He  would 
have  us  utterly  repudiate  this  slander  on  the 
capacity  of  humanity  for  the  highest  and  best. 
He— and  in  this  he  claims  to  speak  for  the 
Church  as  a  whole — has  found  men  capable  of 
the  fellowship  of  real  love. 

The  love  which  St.  John  describes  is  no  doubt 
potentially  universal.  No  doubt  St,  John  would 
assent  to  the  universal  extension  of  love  which 
St.  Peter's  second  Epistle  suggests  ^ — from  "love 
of  the  brethren "  to  "  love "  universal.  But 
St.  John  is  only  speaking  of  love  within  the 
limited  circle  of  believers.  "  The  brethren " 
means  certainly  those  only  who  have  confessed 
Christ  and  been  baptized  into  His  fellowship. 
This  has  been  already  made  plain.  Now,  to 
become  a  Christian  when  St.  John  wrote  was  to 
enter  a  society  viewed  with  intense  suspicion 
and  hatred  in  contemporary  society — though 
it  provoked  also  an  unwilling  admiration.  It 
1  2  Peter  i.  7. 


158  St,  Johns  Epistles 

was  to  run  the  risk  of  calumny  and  persecution. 
The  reality  of  the  sacrifice  involved  in  entering 
it  kept  the  Church  relatively  pure.  Not  that 
Christians  were  perfect ;  but  that  they  re- 
sponded to  moral  discipline  and  to  the  appeal 
of  sacrifice  as  to  what  was  obviously  expected 
of  them.  Within  the  sacred  circle  temporal 
provision  could  fearlessly  be  made  for  all  men, 
because,  speaking  generally,  the  brethren  could 
be  trusted.  "  Charity, ""  in  the  sense  of  alms- 
giving, did  no  harm,  but  good.  It  was  the 
practical  and  voluntary  expression  of  a  real 
community  of  goods.  It  is,  therefore,  desper- 
ately hard  to  apply  the  principles  of  St.  John 
to  a  state  of  society  in  which  the  world  and  the 
Church  have  become  wholly  fused ;  in  which 
it  costs  nothing  to  profess  Christianity— indeed, 
it  rather  costs  something  to  withhold  the  pro- 
fession— in  which  accordingly  there  are  vast 
masses  of  nominal  "  brethren  "  w^hose  member- 
ship counts  for  nothing  in  their  lives  and  who 
respond  not  at  all  to  the  appeals  of  membership. 
In  other  words,  we  have  a  world  to  deal  with 
of  which  St.  John  had  no  experience— a  world 
which  cannot  be  dealt  with  either  as  if  it  were 
really  Christian  or  as  if  it  were  not  more  or  less 


The  church  and  the  world  159 

deeply  leavened  by  the  Christian  tradition. 
Here  I  will  do  no  more  than  point  out  the 
diflerence  of  the  situation.  If  I  were  to  at- 
tempt to  indicate  how  the  difference  has  arisen 
and  what  is  the  way  of  return,  I  should  be  going 
too  far  beyond  the  function  of  the  expositor. 

Meanwhile,  within  the  personal  relationships 
into  which  life  every  day  introduces  us  we  have 
abundant  opportunities  of  testing  ourselves — 
whether  we  do  really  set  our  wills  to  "  love  the 
people  we  do  not  like '' — whether  our  love  is 
practical  and  effective  and  unlimited — whether 
we  are  ready  to  respond  to  every  legitimate 
human  claim. 

2.  Love  without  faith. — We  must  ask  the 
question,  what  would  St.  John  say  to  genuine 
love  divorced  from  right  belief  or  from  member- 
ship in  "  the  brotherhood "  '\  He  does  not 
write  as  if  he  knew  of  its  existence.  He  does 
not  suggest  the  existence  of  pure,  disinterested, 
self-sacrificing  love  in  the  non-Christian  world, 
or  among  the  heretical  sect  who  had  broken 
away  from  the  Church  and  the  faith  of  the 
Incarnation.  He  speaks  as  if  the  true  love 
were  always  the  accompaniment  of  the  right 
faith ;    and  he  speaks  of  each  by  turns  as  in 


160  St.  John's  Epistles 

tiie  higliest  degree  essential.  He  does  indeed 
contemplate  a  right  faith  (so  far  as  mere 
intellectual  confession  goes)  which  does  not 
show  itself  in  love,  and  we  know  what  he 
thinks  of  it  (see  ii.  4,  9,  etc.).  But  what 
would  he  say  to  a  genuine  love  divorced  from 
its  normal  spring  and  motive  in  a  right 
faith  ?  We  really  cannot  say.  We  should 
most  eagerly  desire  to  be  able  to  ask  him 
and  to  know  his  answer.  For  us  the  problem 
is  so  common— to  find  the  genuinely  Christian 
character  where  intellectually  there  is  nothing 
but  doubt  and  even  denial.  We  can  but 
think  that  St.  John  would  hold  to  the  prin- 
ciple which  underlies  all  his  thought  that, 
inasmuch  as  God  is  love,  so  where  love  is  God 
is ;  and  that  He  who  inspires  it  will  crown 
its  exercise  with  the  vision  of  Him  whence  it 
came,  if  not  in  this  world  then  beyond  it.  As 
our  Lord  says,  "  He  that  doeth  his  will  shall 
know  of  the  doctrine,  whether  it  be  of  God.'" 
Nevertheless,  we  must  acknowledge  that  St.  John 
gives  us  no  clear  indication  of  his  mind  in  this 
matter.  He  certainly  states  absolutely  that 
"  if  ye  know  that  he  is  righteous,  ye  know  that 
every    one    also    that    doeth    righteousness    is 


The  church  and  the  world  161 

begotten  of  him  "  (ii.  29).  He  certainly  would 
have  every  one  who  lives  by  love,  reassure 
himself  that  he  is  '*  of  the  truth  '■'  and  has 
God  on  his  side  and  is  possessed  by  His  Spirit 
(iii.  19-20).  He  says  without  qualification,  "If 
we  love  one  another,  God  abideth  in  us,  and 
His  love  is  perfected  in  us '"  (iv.  12).  On  the 
other  hand,  he  is  assured  that  "  he  that  knoweth 
God  heareth  us  \i.e.  listens  to  the  faith  of  the 
Incarnation].  He  who  is  not  of  God  heareth 
us  not "  (iv.  6),  and  "  He  that  confesseth  the  Son 
[i.e.  the  Son  of  God  as  come  in  the  flesh  in  the 
person  of  Jesus]  hath  the  Father  also,  and 
whosoever  denieth  the  Son  the  same  hath  not 
the  Father,"  nor,  it  is  implied,  "  the  eternal 
life  "  (ii.  23-5).  St.  John,  in  fact,  is  convinced 
that  the  true  life  and  the  intellectual  acknow- 
ledgement of  Jesus  as  Christ  and  as  Son  or 
Word  of  God  go  together,  and  that  where 
the  intellectual  acknowledgement  is  absent  or 
denial  is  made,  there  the  roots  of  the  true  life 
are  cut. 

3.  It  is  worth  noting  the  names  under 
which  St.  John  the  aged  addresses  his  disciples 
to  whom  he  writes.  In  ii.  1  he  calls  them  "my 
little   children,"   which   expresses   at   once   his 


162  St.  Johns  Epistles 

fatherly  relation  to  them  and  their  immaturity, 
needing  guidance  and  teaching  and  strength ; 
again  and  again  (first  in  ii.  7)  he  calls  them 
"  beloved/'  which  needs  no  comment ;  in 
ii.  12-14  he  addresses  them  from  different  points 
of  view  as  at  once  "  little  children,"  "  fathers  '' 
because  of  the  wisdom,  and  "  young  men '' 
because  of  the  spiritual  strength  given  them 
in  Christ ;  again  and  again  (iii.  18,  etc.)  he 
calls  them  "  little  children "  ;  and  in  iii.  13 
"  brothers,''  expressing  their  spiritual  equality 
with  himself.  There  is  a  wealth  of  meaning  in 
these  various  names. 

4.  On  the  general  assurance,  "  whatsoever  we 
ask,  we  receive,"  see  below  on  v.  14,  where  it 
is  repeated  with  the  explanatory  addition  "  ac- 
cording to  His  will." 

5.  To  '*  believe  on  the  name  of  His  Son  Jesus 
Christ "  is  a  significant  phrase.  The  name 
means  all  that  is  revealed  in  His  person,  and 
the  three  names,  "  Son,"  "  Jesus,"  "  Christ," 
express  His  divine  and  human  natures  and  His 
mission. 

We  note  that  here  the  commandment  of 
God  is  declared  to  be  twofold — right  faith 
in   Christ's   person,  coupled   with   love   of   the 


The  church  and  the  world  163 

brethren.  Obedience  to  God's  commandments 
ensures  the  mutual  indwelling  of  God  in  the 
disciple  and  the  disciple  in  God,  and  the  evidence 
of  this  is  found  in  the  gift  of  the  Spirit.  So 
the  essence  of  true  religion  is  viewed  in  manifold 
aspects. 


12 


§  7.     1  JOHN  iv.  1-6 

THE    TESTING    OF     SPIRITS 

The  world  in  which  St.  John  was  living  was, 
like  our  own,  full  of  "  movements."  To-day 
we  are  constantly  attending  and  hearing  of 
meetings  which  represent  this  or  that  movement 
— that  is,  this  or  that  group  of  persons  inspired 
by  a  common  aim,  holding  some  idea  in  common 
or  following  some  leader,  and  accordingly  con- 
ferring and  acting  together.  Something  of  the 
same  kind  was  occurring  in  St.  John's  day. 
Most  important  of  all  in  our  eyes,  though  not 
so  in  the  eyes  of  St.  John's  contemporaries, 
was  the  Catholic  Church,  which  was  spreading 
throughout  the  Greek  and  Roman  world  and 
was  soon  to  gain  such  a  position  that,  though 
the  philosophers  endeavoured  to  ignore  it,  the 
imperial  authorities  could  not.  Then  there  was 
the  group  of  movements  called  Gnostic,  partly 
Christian  but  much  more  substantially  Oriental 
in   origin.    Their   nomenclature   sounds   to   us 

164 


The  testing  of  S'pirits  165 

barbaric  and  weird,  but  they  have  remarkable 
affinities  with  modern  theosophy  and  other 
kinds  of  idealism.  Those  known  to  St.  John 
had  all  been  founded  by  men  who  had  belonged 
to,  and  had  left,  the  Christian  faith  and  Church, 
and  the  same  was  the  case  with  some  of  the 
later  Gnostic  sects.  And  they  proved  very 
attractive.  A  hundred  years  later  than  St.  John 
Tertullian  speaks  of  "  this  man  or  that,  the 
most  faithful,  the  wisest,  the  most  experienced 
in  the  Church,  going  over  to  the  wrong  side  '' — 
that  is,  the  Gnostics.  Then  in  the  purely  Pagan 
world  there  were  almost  innumerable  cults  of 
different  divinities,  each  with  its  own  society 
of  votaries ;  and  the  followers  of  different 
philosophies  and  modes  of  life  formed  their  own 
circles ;  and  there  were  guilds  innumerable — 
trade  guilds,  burial  guilds,  guilds  of  all  kinds ; 
while  the  loyalty  to  the  city  and  empire  of  Eome, 
which  gave  the  world  peace  and  order,  expressed 
itself  in  the  deification  of  Eome  and  of  the 
emperors,  and  a  vast  organization  attached 
itself  to  this  worship.  Thus  it  was  an  age  of 
movements  and  associations.  Now  St.  John 
knew  that  the  inspirer  and  maintainer  of  the 
Church  was  the  Spirit  of  God ;    but,  believing 


166  St.  John's  Efistles 

as  lie  did  in  created  spirits  also,  evil  as  well  as 
good,  lie  saw  perhaps,*  in  each,  of  these  con- 
temporary movements,  such  at  least  as  he 
judged  false,  the  action  of  a  personal  evil  spirit 
inspiring  and  controlling  it.  Thus,  where  we 
should  bid  people  not  commit  themselves  to  any 
movement  which  demanded  their  adhesion  with- 
out careful  examination,  St.  John  bids  them 
not  to  believe  every  spirit,  but  to  "  prove  "  or 
test  the  spirits.^  This  is  the  point  of  the  next 
paragraph. 

They  are  to  test  the  spirits,  because  as  St.  John 
looks  out  over  the  world  he  sees  a  widespread 
activity  of  false  prophets.  He  knows  that  they 
are  false  and  that  the  spirit  which  animates 
them  is  not  of  God.  What  is  the  test  that  he 
applies  and  would  have  all  his  brethren  apply  ? 
We  should  have  expected  him,  perhaps,  to  apply 
the  practical  test  of  their  lives,  their  works, 
their  character,  but  here  it  is  the  test  of  doctrine 
which  he  makes  absolute  and  all- sufficient. 
Every  spirit  which  acknowledges  the  truth  of 
the  Incarnation — which  sees  in  Jesus  the  Christ, 

1  See,  however,  below,  pp.  168  f . 

2  c/.  1  Thess.  V.  21 ;  1  Cor.  xii.  10,  xiv.  29,  "  discerning  of 
spirits  "  ;  Rev.  ii.  2. 


The  testing  of  spirits  167 

the  very  Son  of  God  made  flesh— is  of  God. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  every  spirit  which 
refuseth  this  faith  in  Jesus  is  not  of  God  and  is 
a  spirit  of  antichrist,  such  as  they  have  heard 
of  and  can  see  active  among  them.  The 
Christians  have  no  cause  to  fear  these  false 
spirits.  The  power  that  is  in  them  is  greater 
than  anything  that  is  in  the  world.  They  are 
children  of  God  and  they  have  the  experience 
of  victory  already.  Nor  have  they  any  reason 
to  be  surprised  at  the  popularity  of  anti-Christian 
movements.  They  belong  to  the  world.  It  is 
so  they  speak  and  so  they  are  listened  to  :  they 
demand,  that  is,  of  people,  no  change  of 
heart.  They  take  them  as  they  find  them,  on 
their  own  level.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Church 
comes  from  God,  and  those  whose  hearts  God 
has  touched — those  who  know  God — listen  to 
His  messengers :  those  and  those  only.  This 
acknowledgement  of  the  truth  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, this  readiness  to  listen  to  the  message  of 
the  Church,  is  all-sufficient  to  distinguish  the 
spirit  of  truth  from  the  spirit  of  error. 

Beloved,  believe  not  every  spirit,  but  prove  the  spirit3, 
whether  they  are  of  God :  because  many  false  prophets 
are  gone  out  into  the  world.    Hereby  know  ye  the  Spirit 


168  St.  John's  Epistles 

of  God  :  every  spirit  wliicli  confesseth  that  Jesus  Ckrist 
is  come  in  the  flesh  is  of  God  :  and  every  spirit  which 
confesseth  not  Jesus  is  not  of  God  :  and  this  is  the  spirit 
of  the  antichrist,  whereof  ye  have  heard  that  it  cometh  ; 
and  now  it  is  in  the  world  abeady.  Ye  are  of  God,  7ny 
little  children,  and  have  overcome  them  :  because  greater 
is  he  that  is  in  you  than  he  that  is  in  the  world.  They  are 
of  the  world  :  therefore  speak  they  as  of  the  world,  and  the 
world  heareth  them.  We  are  of  God  :  he  that  knoweth 
God  heareth  us  ;  he  who  is  not  of  God  heareth  us  not. 
By  this  we  know  the  spirit  of  truth,  and  the  spirit  of  error. 

1.  Spirits  goodjand  evU.—^t.  John  no  doubt 
believed,  not  only  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Spirit 
of  God,  as  personal,  but  in  a  whole  world  of 
created  personal  spirits  good  and  evil— in  the 
devil  and  in  other  e\il  spirits.  If  he  had  only 
spoken  of  "  the  Spirit  of  truth  "  inspiring  the 
Church,  and  "  the  spirit  of  error/'  "  he  that  is 
in  the  world,"  inspiring  the  false  prophets  and 
their  followers,  or  of  manifold  spirits  of  error, 
we  should  have  had  no  doubt  that  he  was  re- 
ferring to  personal  spirits.  But  when  he  talks 
of  a  multiplicity  of  spirits  ("  every  spirit "") 
which  acknowledge  Christ  with  a  true  faith 
(ver.  2)  we  are  in  doubt.  He  can  hardly  con- 
ceive of  groups  of  Christians  or  individual 
Christians  as  inspired  by  a  number  of  minor 
personal  spirits,  true  and  good.    At  least  that 


The  testing  of  spirits  169 

would  be  a  new  doctrine,  unheard-of  elsewhere. 
Only  the  one  Holy  Spirit  is  spoken  of  as  inspiring 
Christians.  So  we  are  driven  to  wonder  whether 
St.  John  does  not  use  "  spirit "  (without  the 
definite  article)  almost  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  use  it  when  we  speak  of  the  "  corporate 
spirit "  in  a  movement,  or  "  the  group  spirit." 
That  is  to  use  the  word  "  spirit "  not  to  describe 
a  distinct  personal  being,  but  a  display  of 
spiritual  influence.  Of  course,  this  again  is  a 
mysterious  thing,  something  plainly  not  in- 
dividual, which  yet  can  hardly  be  thought  of 
as  wholly  impersonal.  But  St.  John  would  not 
be  analysing  it ;  he  would  simply  be  using  the 
word  spirit  in  this  place  vaguely,  as  we  use  it, 
to  describe  the  unseen  but  compelling  force  of 
any  movement,  good  or  bad,  among  men. 

2.  The  doctrinal  fes^s— that  "  Jesus  Christ 
is  come  in  the  flesh,''  or  that  "  Jesus  is  the 
Christ  who  has  come  in  the  flesh."'  There  were 
in  early  days  "  Docetics  "  (so  called)  who  be- 
lieved that  Jesus  Christ  was  a  mere  apparition 
with  no  real  and  bodily  humanity.  But  St. 
John's  opponents  do  not  appear  to  have  held 
any  such  belief.^     They  had  no  doubt  that  the 

^  See  above,  p.  1 1 6  note. 


170  St.  John's  Efistles 

man  Jesus  was  real,  "  in  the  flesh/'  What  they 
doubted  was  whether  the  divine  being — the 
Son  or  the  Christ,  as  they  called  him — was 
really  identical  with  Jesus  in  person,  or  was 
only  temporarily  associated  with  Him,  visiting 
Him  at  His  baptism  and  withdrawing  from 
Him  before  His  death.  When  St.  John  then 
makes  the  point  of  faith  to  be  the  confession 
that  "  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  come  in  the  flesh,'' 
he  must  mean,  as  he  elsewhere  expresses  it, 
the  belief  that  the  man  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was 
nothing  less  than  the  manifestation  in  the 
flesh  of  the  eternal  Word  and  Son  of  God — 
Himself  God  made  flesh  and  Himself  the  glorified 
Christ. 

The  contrary  judgement  is  expressed  in  our  text 
as  "  every  spirit  which  confesseth  not  Jesus," 
i.e.  which  does  not  so  acknowledge  Him  as  the 
Christ  and  the  divine  Son.  This  is  the  read- 
ing of  all  the  Greek  MSS.  But  the  Latin 
MSS.  and  Fathers  attest  another  reading  (see 
R.V.  margin)  which  goes  back  to  quite  primitive 
times,  which  is  translated  "  every  spirit  which 
annulleth,"  or  much  better,  *'  which  dissolveih 
Jesus,  is  not  of  God.''  This  is  so  difficult  and 
at  the  same  time  so  significant  a  reading  that 


The  testing  of  spirits  171 

I  am  disposed  to  believe  that  it  is  original.  It 
would  (as  explained  on  p.  114)  express  exactly 
what  Cerinthus  and  his  followers  did.  They 
resolved  the  single  person,  Jesus  Christ,  incarnate 
Son  of  God,  into  two  persons — one  celestial, 
called  Son  and  Christ ;  and  the  other  of  earth, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  And  St.  John  repudiates 
this  theory  of  theirs  as  fundamentally  de- 
structive of  Christianity.  For  he  has  con- 
centrated his  mind  through  a  long  life  on  this 
point,  and  he  is  profoundly  convinced  that  the 
only  sufficient  basis  of  Christian  practice  is  the 
Christian  theory  or  faith  in  the  real  incarnation 
of  the  Son  of  God — that  Jesus  was  and  is  the 
Christ  and  Son  of  God,  and  not  only  a  human 
person  in  some  close  connection  with  him.  Thus 
it  is  that  he  speaks  so  dogmatically  and  decisively. 
Only,  be  it  observed,  he  would  not  be  content 
with  his  disciples  accepting  his  word  for  it. 
They  must  judge  for  themselves.  For  them- 
selves they  must  "  test  the  spirits.''  Because 
the  same  Spirit  which  has  guided  their  teacher's 
judgement  and  inspired  their  teacher's  con- 
viction will  in  like  manner  guide  and  inspire 
them. 

3.  St.  John's  decisiveness. — We  to-day,  who 


172  St.  John's  Epistles 

would  be  intelligent  persons,  do  not  find  intel- 
lectual decisions  easy.  We  like  to  see  good  on 
all  sides  and  in  all  opinions.  But  St.  John  is 
intensely  persuaded  that  there  is  a  mortal 
struggle  going  on  between  good  and  evil,  between 
truth  and  falsehood,  between  Christ  and  the 
devil.  Thus,  he  seeks  to  go  to  the  root  principle 
of  every  claim  and  determine  whether  it  is,  at 
the  root  and  so  in  its  ultimate  issues,  for  Christ 
or  against  Him.  It  cannot  be  both.  And  he 
sees  the  root  principle  of  Christian  truth,  as 
has  just  been  said,  in  the  real  incarnation  of 
God  in  Jesus.  And  with  an  unfaltering  decision 
he  proclaims  and  applies  this  test.  And  here, 
in  this  paragraph,  he  proclaims  this  doctrinal 
test  as  if  it  stood  alone  and  there  were  no  other. 
But  then  immediately  the  note  changes.  He 
shows  the  reason  of  this  zeal  for  the  theological 
truth.  It  is  because  it  is  the  ground,  the  only 
adequate  ground,  of  the  conviction  that  God 
is  love  and  love  is  the  only  true  life  for  man. 


§  8.     1  JOHN  iv.  7-21 

GOD   IS   LOVE 

At  this  point  in  the  Epistle  we  pass  from  the 
thought  of  the  conflict  of  the  Church  and  the 
world,  or  of  Christ  and  the  antichrists,  and 
henceforward  are  occupied  with  the  consideration 
of  .what  Christianity,  the  true  religion,  essentially 
is.  And  the  point  of  this  section  is  that  Inas- 
much as  religion  is  fellowship  with  God,  and  in 
Christ  God  has  revealed  His  essential  character 
as  love,  so  love — a  love  like  Christ's — is  the 
essence  and  test  of  the  true  religion.  Where  love 
is,  God  is ;  and  where  love  is  not,  God  is  not. 

So  he  begins,  "  Beloved,  let  us  love  one 
another/'  Inasmuch  as  love  can  proceed  from 
no  other  source  than  God,  every  one  who  really 
loves  has  his  birth  from  God  and  knows  God. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  God's  very  being  is  love, 
a  loveless  or  selfish  person  shows  conclusively 
that  he  does  not  know  Him.  If  the  question 
be  asked.  How  do  we  know  God's  real  character, 
the  answer  is  that  He  has  made  it  evident  in 

173 


174  St.  John's  Epistles 

our  case  by  sending  His  only  Son  into  tlie 
world — tlie  one  and  only  perfect  expression  of 
Himself— that  through  Him  we  might  share  the 
true  life,  the  life  of  God.  Love  is  not  something 
which  belongs  to  human  nature  or  starts  from 
our  side  toward  God.  It  is  all  the  other  way. 
God  sent  His  Son  to  redeem  us  from  our  sins 
and  reconcile  us  to  Himself  by  the  sacrifice  of 
His  life.  Here,  in  this  sacrifice  of  self  for  man, 
we  see  the  character  of  G_od.  And  hence  follows 
the  duty  of  so  loving  our  brother-man.  The 
vision  of  God  as  He  is  has  never  yet  been  within 
the  capacity  of  man ;  but  in  Christ  we  know 
of  what  sort  He  is,  and  can  therefore  imitate 
Him  in  the  love  of  our  brethren,  and  herein 
find  assurance  that  God,  whose  being  love  is, 
dwells  in  us  and  His  love  has  found  its  accom- 
plishment in  us.  It  is  only  to  say  this  in  other 
words,  to  say  that  the  presence  of  love  is  proof 
of  the  presence  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  the 
presence  of  His  Spirit  is  the  guarantee  of  the 
mutual  indwelling  of  God  and  us.  Or,  again, 
inasmuch  as  our  love  is  based  upon  the  recog- 
nition of  the  love  of  God,  as  manifested  in  Christ 
for  the  world's  salvation,  so  we  must  say  that  the 
confession  of  this  manifestation,  the  confession 


God  is  love  175 


of  Jesus  as  Son  of  God,  is  tlie  guarantee  of  this 
mutual  indwelling  of  God  and  us.  So  only  has 
the  Son  of  God  been  recognized  and  believed. 

This,  then,  is  our  sure  ground.  As  God  is 
love,  so  where  love  is,  God  is,  and  the  permanence 
of  love  in  us  means  that  we  are  permanently 
dwelling  in  God  and  God  in  us.  And  inasmuch 
as  the  perfection  of  love  is  in  mutual  confidence, 
so  the  perfection  of  divine  love  is  to  be  shown 
in  our  case  by  our  confidence  in  the  final  day  of 
disclosure — the  day  of  judgement.  We  are  living 
the  life  of  love — as  He  is,  so  are  we  in  the  world. 
We  have  accordingly  nothing  to  fear.  There 
is  a  complete  understanding  between  us.  Love 
in  its  perfection  must,  in  fact,  expel  fear :  for 
fear  is  fear  of  punishment  and  means  that 
love  is  not  perfect.  And  again  be  it  said,  this 
love  in  man  is  no  invention  of  man — no  enter- 
prise of  his  own.  It  is  purely  and  simply  the 
following  of  God,  who  showed  us  His  love  to 
us.  And,  in  our  case,  love  can  only  be  proved 
manward.  For  a  man  to  profess  love  to  God 
while  he  hates  his  brother  is  to  prove  himself 
a  liar.  For  the  testing  of  love  is  in  experience. 
You  have  seen  your  brother.  He  has  come 
into  your  experience.    Do  you  love  him  ?    If 


176  St.  John's  Epistles 

not,  you  have  not  love,  and  it  is  an  idle  boast  to 
say,  in  that  case,  that  you  love  God  whom  you 
have  not  seen — that  is  to  say,  that  love  exists 
in  you  where  it  has  not  been  put  to  the  test  of 
experience,  when  it  has  been  shown  not  to  exist 
where  it  has  been  put  to  the  test.  Besides, 
it  is  not  merely  a  matter  of  inference.  It  is  a 
matter  of  a  positive  commandment  of  God  that 
he  who  loveth  God  love  his  brother  also. 

Beloved,  let  us  love  one  another  :  for  love  is  of  God  ; 
and  every  one  that  loveth  is  begotten  of  Grod,  and  knoweth 
God.  He  that  loveth  not  knoweth  not  God ;  for  God  is 
love.  Herein  was  the  love  of  God  manifested  in  us,  that 
God  hath  sent  his  only  begotten  Son  into  the  world,  that 
we  might  live  through  him.  Herein  is  love,  not  that  we 
loved  God,  but  that  he  loved  us,  and  sent  his  Son  to  be 
the  propitiation  for  our  sins.  Beloved,  if  God  so  loved 
us,  we  also  ought  to  love  one  another.  No  man  hath  beheld 
God  at  any  time  :  if  we  love  one  another,  God  abideth  in 
us,  and  his  love  is  perfected  in  us  :  hereby  know  we  that 
we  abide  in  him,  and  he  in  us,  because  he  hath  given  us 
of  his  Spirit.  And  we  have  beheld  and  bear  witness  that 
the  Father  hath  sent  the  Son  to  be  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 
Whosoever  shall  confess  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God,  God 
abideth  in  him,  and  he  in  God.  And  we  know  and  have 
believed  the  love  which  God  hath  in  us.  God  is  love  ;  and 
he  that  abideth  in  love  abideth  in  God,  and  God  abideth 
in  him.  Herein  is  love  made  perfect  with  us,  that  we  may 
have  boldness  in  the  day  of  judgement ;  because  as  he  is, 
even  so  are  we  in  this  world.    There  is  no  fear  in  love  :  but 


God  is  love  177 


perfect  love  castetli  out  fear,  because  fear  hatli  punishment ; 
and  lie  that  feareth  is  not  made  perfect  in  love.  We  love, 
because  he  first  loved  us.  If  a  man  say,  I  love  God,  and 
hateth  his  brother,  he  is  a  liar  :  for  he  that  loveth  not  his 
brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  cannot  love  God  whom  he 
hath  not  seen.  And  this  commandment  have  we  from 
him,  that  he  who  loveth  God  love  his  brother  also. 

1.  God  is  love. — St.  John's  whole  argument 
implies  that  in  Jesus  Christ  we  see  revealed  \ 
the  true  character  of  God.  It  is  true  that  the 
phrase  so  often  repeated,  *'  God  sent  His  Son/' 
need  not  of  itself  mean  so  much.  The  character 
of  the  Messenger  might  be  different  from  the 
character  of  Him  that  sent  Him.  And,  in  fact, 
theologians  have  sometimes  been  at  such  pains 
to  guard  the  "  impassibility  "  of  the  Father — 
that  is,  His  incapacity  for  suffering — that  the 
whole  of  that  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  which  appears 
as  the  very  central  characteristic  of  our  Lord 
has  been  represented  as  alien  to  the  being  of  the 
Father.  But  St.  John  conceives  of  the  Son  as 
in  His  incarnation  revealing  nothing  else  than 
the  mind  and  character  of  the  Father.  "  He 
that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father."  His 
love  is  God's  love,  and  as  the  very  essence  of 
His  love  is  self-sacrifice,  such,  St.  John  would 
have  us  believe,  is  the  love  of  the  Father.    The 


178  St.  Johns  Epistles 

Patripassians,  i.e.  those  who  ascribed  the  suffer- 
ings of  Christ  to  the  Father,  were  no  doubt 
rightly  condemned,  for  they  were  defined  by 
Origen,  their  contemporary,  as  *'  those  who 
identify  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and  represent 
them  as  one  and  the  same  person  under  two 
different  names.''  ^  Herein,  no  doubt,  they 
fell  into  most  serious  error.  No  one  could 
reasonably  argue  that  St.  John  does  not  re- 
present Father  and  Son  as  different  "  persons." 
It  was  clearly,  in  his  view,  the  Son  and  not  the 
Father  who  lived  among  men  and  prayed  to 
the  Father  and  suffered  on  the  Cross.  But 
the  opponents  of  Patripassianism,  though  they 
have  the  truth  on  their  side  so  far,  often  use 
arguments  which  are  certainly  not  derived  from 
the  Bible,  but  from  Greek  philosophy,  arguments 
implying  that  the  divine  being  is  in  itself  so 
wholly  "  impassible,"  so  emotionless  and  passion- 
less, that  the  ascription  to  it  of  the  name  of 
love  would  seem  unreal.      Nothing  can  be  less 

1  Origen  on  the  Epistle  to  Titus.  We  have  only  Rufinus's 
translation.  "  Patripassians  "  were,  in  fact,  the  same  as  those 
called  Sabelliana  by  the  Greeks,  and  Origen  probably  used  the 
latter  name ;  but  the  consequence  of  their  teaching,  which  is 
emphasized  in  the  name  "  Patripaasians,"  was  what  Origen  had 
particularly  in  view. 


God  is  love  179 


true  of  the  God  revealed  in  the  Old  Testament 
and  of  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.     It  is  the  innermost  and  divine  being 
of  the  Son  which  St.  John  would  have  us  believe 
is  revealed  under  human  conditions  "  in  the 
flesh  "  of  Jesus  Christ.    And  in  this  His  divine 
being  He  is  "  of  one  substance  with  the  Father." 
He  differs  from  the  Father  in  no  respect  except 
in  being  His  Son,  derived,  therefore,  from  Him 
and    dependent   upon    Him,    but   identical   in 
quality  and  character.     It  is  only  because  this 
is  absolutely  the  case  that  St.  John  can  argue 
back  from  Christ's  love  to  God's  love,  and  assure 
us  that  God  is  love  in  His  very  essence,  and  where 
love  is,  love  of  which  the  characteristic  act  is 
self-sacrifice,  God  is.    Indeed,  if  it  were  not  so — 
if  the  Father  were  not  implicated  (so  to  speak) 
in  the  sufferings  of  Jesus — the  "  sending  "  of 
Him  to  suffer  and  die    might  be  an  argument 
rather  for  indifference   on  His  part  than  for 
love. 

Truly  the  Church  always  needs  to  remember 
that  the  speculations  of  theologians  about  the 
mysteries  of  God's  being  need  constantly  to  be 
brought  to  trial  at  the  bar  of  God's  word — 
His  true  expression  of  Himself  through  His 
13 


180  St.  Johns  Efistles 

prophets  and  in  His  Son.  And  tlie  ideas  of  God's 
almightiness,  uncliangeableness,  omniscience, 
impassibility,  etc.,  which  the  Bible  conveys  to 
our  minds,  differ  considerably  from  the  abstract 
ideas  derived  from  Greek  philosophy.'  The 
ancient  philosophers,  in  fact,  were  so  obsessed 
with  the  desire  to  deny  to  God  not  merely 
everything  carnal,  but  everything  that  belongs 
to  the  emotional  nature  of  man,  that  the  religion 
of  the  Bible — the  religion  of  the  Incarnation — 
can  never  in  this  respect  find  itself  at  home 
with  them.  There  is  nothing  about  God  in  the 
philosophers  which  will  compare  with  Isaiah's 
"In  all  their  afflictions  he  was  afflicted,  .  .  . 
in  his  love  and  in  his  pity  he  redeemed  them  ; 
and  he  bare  them,  and  carried  them  all  the  days 
of  old." 

2.  "  Love  is  of  God."  Some  modern  thinkers 
— Huxley,  Bertrand  Russell,  Wells — have  told 
us  just  the  opposite  of  this.  Love  is  a  splendid 
human  growth,  which  rebel  man  has  to  make 
a   desperate   attempt   to   impose  upon   or   ac- 

^  Thomas  Treheme — our  recently  discovered  seventeenth- 
century  Anglican  mystic — in  his  Century  of  Meditations  (Dobell) 
has  a  magnificent  protest  against  the  unemotional  idea  of  God 
derived  from  Greek  philosophy.     See  Cent,  i,  40,  pp.  27  ff. 


God  is  love  181 


climatize  in  a  reluctant  universe.  The  great 
bulk  of  nature  knows  nothing  .of  it.  Now,  we 
must  rejoice  that  such  men  should  hold  fast 
by  what  they  know  in  their  consciences  to  be 
the  best,  even  if  the  universal  life  were  all 
against  them.  Nevertheless,  for  man  to  war 
with  nature  is  at  bottom  an  irrational  and  futile 
kind  of  rebellion.  Nature  is  too  vast  for  puny 
man  to  impose  its  will  upon  it.  The  wise  man 
has  always  seen  that  man's  true  destiny  must 
be  in  harmony  with  nature.  And  St.  John's 
magnificent  assurance  of  the  supremacy  of  love 
depends,  as  he  so  deeply  perceives,  on  the  belief 
that  the  origin  and  fount  of  love  is  in  God  and 
not  in  us.  "  Love  is  of  God."  "  God  is  love.''l 
And  again,  this  assurance  can  be  grounded  on 
no  other  secure  basis  than  the  belief  that  Christ, 
who  certainly  is  love,  comes,  as  He  Himself 
declares,  from  God,  and  discloses,  in  the  in- 
telligible lineaments  of  human  self-sacrifice, . 
the  very  heart  of  the  eternal  and  omnipresent '; 
God,  the  maker  and  sustainer  of  all  that  is. 

3.  The  purpose  for  which  the  Father  sent  His 
only-begotten  Son  into  the  world  is  described 
by  St.  John  in  this  passage  in  three  phrases  : 
(1)  that  we  might  live  through  Him ;    (2)  to 


182  St.  John's  Epistles 

be  the  propitiation  for  our  sins ;  (3)  to  be  the 
saviour  of  the  world.  Each  phrase  is  character- 
istic. The  first  represents  the  constant  theme 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  *'  In  him  was  life  and 
the  life  was  the  light  of  men  ''  (i.  4).  *'  As  the 
Father  hath  life  in  himself,  so  hath  he  given 
to  the  Son  to  have  life  in  himself "  (v.  26). 
"  God  so  loved  the  world,  that  he  gave  his 
only  begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  believeth  on 
him  should  .  .  .  have  eternal  life "  (iii.  16). 
"  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  Except  ye  eat 
the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man  and  drink  his  blood, 
ye  have  not  life  in  yourselves.  He  that  eateth 
my  flesh  and  drinketh  my  blood  hath  eternal 
life.  ...  As  the  living  Father  sent  me,  and  I 
live  because  of  the  Father ;  so  he  that  eateth 
me,  he  also  shall  live  because  of  me  "  (vi.  53-7). 
"  I  came  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have 
it  abundantly''  (x.  10).  "  I  am  the  .  .  .  life'* 
(xiv.  6).  "  Because  I  live,  ye  shall  live  also  " 
(xiv.  19).  Here  we  have  the  whole  doctrine  of 
what  St.  Paul  also  calls  "  the  life  that  is  life 
indeed"  (1  Tim.  vi.  19).  The  Son  is,  by  com- 
munication from  the  Father,  the  eternal  seat  of 
life.  He  has  illuminated  man  since  his  creation 
as  a  rational  being,  but  in  His  incarnation  He 


God  is  love  183 


manifested  the  true  life  under  human  conditions 
to  human  observation.  Men  become  receptive 
of  it  by  faith,  but  it  is  only  by  the  actual  com- 
munication of  Christ's  manhood  to  them  that 
they  can  have  it  in  themselves.  That  they  may 
so  have  it  is  the  purpose  of  His  coming.  And 
(it  must  be  added)  the  instrument  of  its  com- 
munication to  them  is  the  Holy  Spirit.  This 
is  implied  in  our  Lord's  words  about  the  "  living 
water  ''  (John  vii.  37)  and  in  His  last  discourses 
(xiv.-xvi.),  and  is  expressed  more  directly  by 
St.  Paul.  This,  then,  is  the  object  of  His 
coming,  "  that  we  might  live  through  Him.'' 

Then  in  the  second  phrase  St.  John  repeats 
in  part  what  he  has  said  earlier  in  his  Epistle 
(ii.  2),  and  declares  Christ  to  have  come  into 
the  world"  to  be  the  propitiation  for  our  sins  " — 
that  is,  to  remove  the  preliminary  obstacle  to 
fellowship  with  God  which  men's  sin  had  inter- 
posed, and  by  the  sacrifice  of  Himself  to  reconcile 
us  to  God  and  restore  the  free  current  of  His 
love.  St.  John  plainly  accepts  this  idea  of 
propitiation  and  its  necessity  without  scruple, 
but  he  does  not  go  even  so  far  as  St.  Paul  in 
suggesting  an  explanation.  He  simply  asserts 
it  twice  here  in  his  Epistle,  as  in  his   Gospel 


184  St.  John's  Epistles 

he  relates  St.  John  Baptist's  suggestion  of  it 
(i.  29),  and  alludes  to  it  under  the  figure  of  the 
brazen  serpent  (iii.  14)  and  in  explanation  of 
Caiaphas's  "prophecy"  (xi.  51-2). 

Thirdly,  he  expresses  the  purpose  and  universal 
scope  of  Christ's  work  in  the  incarnation  by  the 
phrase  to  be  "  the  saviour  of  the  world  "  (cf. 
earlier,  ii.  2,  "  and  not  for  our  sins  only,  but  for 
the  whole  world ").  It  is  characteristic  of 
St.  John  that  he  does  not  seek  to  supply  us 
with  any  help  in  correlating  these  different 
statements,  any  more  than  his  statements  about 
love  and  right  belief  and  the  possession  of  the 
Spirit,  as,  each  in  itself,  the  all-sufficient  mark 
of  divine  sonship.  But  it  is  safe  to  affirm  that 
St.  John  would  have  us  see  in  Christ's  work  in 
'us,  actually  renewing  and  imparting  the  true 
life  to  us,  and  abiding  in  us  that  we  may  abide 
in  Him  and  so  in  the  Father  by  the  Spirit,  the 
ultimate  purpose  of  Christ's  coming,  without 
\  which  all  else  would  have  been  in  vain.  At  the 
same  time  he  would  have  us  recognize  a  pre- 
liminary necessity  for  the  removal  of  the  existing 
obstacle  of  sin.  This  is  Christ's  work  for  us, 
which  He  calls  "  propitiation."  Hereby,  without 
any  assistance  or  co-operation  on  our  part,  simply 


God  is  love  185 

by  the  power  of  His  perfect  sacrifice,  Christ  gave 
maiildnd  a  new  standing-ground  before  the 
Father,  and  enabled  the  Father  to  look  upon 
man,  in  Christ,  with  new  eyes,  and  pour  out 
upon  him  freely  the  fulness  of  His  love.  And 
if  we  seek  for  the  phrase  to  express,  in  accordance 
with  man's  universal  sense  of  need,  what  the  love 
of  God  intends,  and  for  whom  He  intends  it, 
we  can  find  it  only  in  St.  John's  third  phrase — 
salvation  as  wide  as  the  world.  The  world  in 
various  ways,  ignorantly  but  earnestly,  was 
asking  for  "  salvation "  and  deliverance  from 
the  manifold  evils  of  life.  And  St.  John  affirms 
that  it  is  the  purpose  of  God  to  correspond  with 
this  world-wide  desire  without  stint  or  limitation, 
and  that  there  is  one  only  name  given  under 
heaven  wherein  this  universal  salvation  is  really 
to  be  found. 

4.  There  are  two  chief  tests  given  by  St.  John 
of  our  abiding  in  God  and  God  in  us — the  one 
is  love  and  the  other  is  the  confession  that  Jesus 
is  the  Son  of  God.  As  already  remarked,  no 
guidance  is  given  us  how  to  think  of  cases  where 
the  two  tests  do  not  coincide — none  at  least  in 
the  case  where  there  is  the  genuine  love  but 
not  the  true  confession.    But  we  need  to  notice 


186  St.  John's  Epistles 

the  fact  that  St.  John  does  insist  on  the  in- 
tellectual as  well  as  the  moral  test.     There  is 
a  very  widespread  tendency  to-day  to  disparage 
the     value     of     intellectual    propositions     or 
.  dogmas  in  religion.    St.  John  would  have  none 
(  of  this.    For  him  the  practical  belief  that  love 
■  is  the  supreme  expression  of  God  is  only  rational 
if  it  is  also  believed  that  God  has  really  revealed 
Himself  in  Jesus,  and  that  Jesus  is  personally 
His  only-begotten  Son  incarnate.    He   cannot 
separate,  or  allow  us  to  separate,  the  practical 
belief  from  its  intellectual  expression.    He  is 
sure  they  are  interdependent,  and  that  no  other 
opinion  about  Jesus  will  justify  us  in  maintaining 
that  God  is  love.     Therefore  he  insists  on  his 
two    tests— the    one    practical,    the    other    in- 
tellectual— with    an    equal    and   unconditional 
emphasis. 

5.  Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear. — The  reason 
which  St.  John  gives  why  perfect  love  is  in- 
compatible with  fear  is  that  fear  "  hath "  or 
"  involves "  (the  word  is  vague)  punishment. 
This  may  mean  that  fear  is  fear  of  divine  punish- 
ment. The  man  fears  to  sin  because  God  will 
punish  him  for  his  sin  hereafter.  It  may  also 
mean  that  fear  torments  the  soul  and  is  itself 


God  is  love  187 


a  punisliment.  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that 
the  former  meaning  is  the  right  one.  Cf.  Isaiah, 
"  Sinners  in  Zion  are  afraid. ''  at  the  tidings  of 
the  approach  of  God.  "  Who  among  us/' 
they  cry,  "  shall  dwell  with  the  devouring  fire  ? 
who  among  us  shall  dwell  with  the  everlasting 
burnings  V  It  is  the  divine  visitation  that  is 
described  thus  under  the  figure  of  fire.  It 
represents  itself  to  them  as  terrible  punishment. 
But  "  he  that  walketh  uprightly  "  need  have 
no  such  terror.  He  "  shall  behold  the  King 
in  his  beauty.'"  ^  So  St.  John  says  "  perfected 
love  "  has  no  place  for  servile  fear  of  the  punish- 
ment which  the  day  of  the  Lord  will  bring  with 
it.  But  he  does  not  say  that  perfect  love  is 
not  based  upon  and  cannot  grow  out  of  a  very 
imperfect  sort  of  love,  which  must  consist  with 
a  large  element  of  fear.  Our  generation  is 
extraordinarily  without  the  fear  of  God.  But 
its  fearlessness  seems  like  the  fearlessness  of 
Jehoiachim  and  his  courtiers,  a  foolish  fear- 
lessness, due  only  to  a  failure  to  consider  the 
awfulness  of  the  divine  presence  and  judgement. 
Our  Lord  Himself  bids  us  fear — "  fear  him  who 
is  able  to  destroy  both  soul  and  body  in  hell.'' 

^  Is.  xxxiii.  14-17, 


188  St.  John's  Epistles 

And  it  is  only  too  possible  to  be  premature  in 
claiming  the  fearlessness  wLich  belongs  to  love 
only  when  it  is  perfected. 

6.  He  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath 
seen,  etc. — In  the  authorized  version  this  sen- 
tence concluded  with  a  question,  "  How  can  he 
love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen  ?  "  which 
seemed  to  imply  that  it  was  much  easier  to  love 
what  you  had  seen  than  what  you  had  not. 
This  may  be  true.  But  I  remember  a  brilliant 
young  man — young,  that  is,  more  than  forty 
years  ago — exclaiming  against  St.  John's  argu- 
ment, because  he  himself  found  no  difficulty  in 
loving  people  till  he  had  seen  them.  It  was 
the  sight  which  caused  the  difficulty,  I  think 
this  is  really  St.  John's  point.  It  is  "  sight," 
that  is,  experience,  which  brings  our  love  to 
the  test.  The  practical  probation  is  that  we 
have  "  to  love  the  people  whom  we  don't  like.'* 
If  we  fail  when  this  practical  test  is  applied, 
we  prove  that  we  have  not  genuine  love — only 
natural  liking  with  its  correlative  disliking. 
And  our  profession  of  loving  God,  where  our 
love  has  been  put  to  no  such  test,  is  disproved. 
"  If  he  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen, 
he  cannot  love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen." 


God  is  love  189 


And  we  may  venture  to  extend  the  argument. 
Sometimes  we  have,  if  not  sight,  yet  at  least 
experience  of  God,  and  He  seems  hard,  remorse- 
less, inexorable.  If  we  fail  under  this  trial, 
if  all  our  love  to  God  quite  vanishes  under  His 
seemingly  heavy  hand,  is  it  not  a  proof  that  we 
never  had  any  real  love  of  God  ?  But  this  is 
not  suggested  by  St.  John.  Experience,  or 
what  St.  John  calls  "  sight,''  is  the  testing  of 
the  reality  of  love,  and  this  testing  he  is  content 
to  find  in  the  relations  of  men  to  one  another. 

7.  "  In  us,"  in  ver.  9  and  perhaps  in  ver.  16, 
should  be,  I  think,  "among  us"  or  '*'in  our 
case"  (see  R.V.  margin),  in  spite  of  the  rather 
frequent  recurrence  of  "in  us  "  in  the  context. 
The  Greek  preposition  can  carry  this  meaning, 
and  what  is  in  view  appears  to  be  the  disclosure 
of  the  divine  love  among  men  in  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

8.  In  the  word  "  only-begotten  "  here  applied 
to  our  Lord  (ver.  9),  the  emphasis  is  on  the 
first  part  of  the  compound  word.  It  is  used  of 
anything  that  is  unique  in  kind. 


§  9.     1  JOHN  V.   1-12 

THE   DIVINE    WITNESS   TO    JESUS   AS   THE 
CHRIST 

[If  readers  will  turn  back  to  the  account 
already  given  of  the  teaching  of  Cerinthus 
(p.  114),  whom  St.  John  appears  to  have  in 
mind  in  this  Epistle  as  the  typical  adversary, 
they  will  find  the  latter  part  of  the  section  easier 
to  understand.] 

St.  John  begins  by  affirming  that  the  belief 
that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  is  the  mark  of  divine 
sonship.  And  the  character  of  true  sonship 
to  God  shows  itself  with  an  equal  necessity 
both  in  the  love  of  our  brethren  and  in  the 
love  of  the  Father.  On  the  one  hand,  you 
cannot  really  love  the  Father  ("  that  begat ") 
unless  you  love  each  of  His  children.  On  the 
other  hand,  you  cannot  know  that  you  love  the 
children  of  God,  as  being  such,  unless  you  love 
God,  the  Father  of  this  new  family,  and  do 
His  commandments.  The  love  of  God  means 
nothing  at  all  except  this  diligent  keeping  of 

190 


The  divine  witness  to  Jesus  191 

His  commandments.    And  we  are  not  to  think 
of  His  commandments  as  a  burden  hard  to  be 
borne.     They  are   indeed   a   heavy   burden   to 
those  who  belong  to   the  worldly  world  and 
have   their  real  interest   in   the   things   which 
make  it  up,  "  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and  the  lust 
of  the  eyes  and  the  vainglory  of  life '' ;    but 
our  new  birth  as  children  of  God  admits  us,  j 
every  one,  to  victory  over  all  the  powers  of  1 
this   old   world.    And   the   instrument   of   this 
victory  is  our  faith.     The  Christian  faith  has 
triumphed  over  the  world  once  for  all,  because 
it  is  faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God.     We 
should  explain  this  by  reference  to  the  Gospel.  ■ 
There  we  see  Him  in  the  world.     We  see  the 
world  apparently  victorious  over  Him,  rejecting 
Him   and   crucifying  Him.    But  we   see  Him ', 
also    triumphant   through    death   over    all   the  • 
powers  of  the  world,  and  made  manifest  in  His 
Resurrection  as  the  Son  of  God — our  Lord  and 
our  God.    And  through  faith  in  Him,  St.  John  \ 
now  tells  us.  His  victory  is  ours.    And  there  is 
no    other   instrument   of   victory    except   that 
faith. 

Now   we   are   to   consider  closely  the  divine 
witness  borne  to  Christ.     We  are  to  note  two 


192  St.  John's  Epistles 

symbolic  tokens  of  His  manifestation  when  He 
who  was  to  come  did  come— Jesus  the  Christ. 
First,  He  came  by  water,  when  at  the  opening 
of  His  ministry  He  was  baptized  by  John  the 
Baptist  in  the  river  Jordan,  and  on  that  occasion, 
as  we  are  told  in  the  Gospel,  John  (as  well  as 
Jesus)  "  beheld  the  Spirit  descending  as  a  dove 
out  of  heaven ;  and  it  abode  upon  him." 
"  And  I  knew  him  not,'*  he  said ;  "  but  he 
that  sent  me  to  baptize  with  water,  he  said 
unto  me,  Upon  whomsoever  thou  shalt  see  the 
Spirit  descending,  and  abiding  upon  him,  the 
same  is  he  that  baptizeth  with  the  Holy  Spirit. 
And  I  have  seen  and  have  borne  witness  that 
this  is  the  Son  of  God"  ( John  i.  32-4).  Thus 
He  was  marked  out  at  His  baptism  in  water  as 
a  divine  being,  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Christ. 
And,  secondly.  He  came  by  blo^ — the  blood 
of  the  Cross,  which  is  the  symbol  of  true  human 
flesh,  sacrificed  and  suffering.  Not  as  our  ad- 
versaries say,  who  recognize  the  divine  Christ 
only  in  the  water  and  refuse  to  acknowledge 
Him  in  the  blood.  Nay,  in  Him  both  were 
joined,  even  as  St.  John  has  seen  and  borne 
witness  in  his  Gospel  that  out  of  His  pierced 
side  upon  the  cross  flowed  together  water  and 


The  divine  witness  to  Jesus  193 

blood.  Both  together  mark  Him  as  He  that 
should  come,  divine  and  from  heaven,  but  in 
the  true  flesh  of  man.  And  it  is  the  Spirit 
whom  Jesus  has  poured  forth  upon  us — the 
Spirit  of  God,  which  is  the  Spirit  of  truth, 
promised  to  guide  us  into  all  the  truth  and  now 
given  to  us — who  bears  witness  that  Jesus  is 
no  other  than  the  Christ.  For  He  who  gives 
the  Spirit  is  the  Christ.  But  indeed  there  is 
a  threefold  witness — the  witness  of  the  Spirit 
which  cannot  lie ;  and  the  witness  of  the  water 
of  baptism,  Christ's  baptism,  and  now,  too, 
ours — the  witness  of  His  divine  sonship  and 
the  instrument  of  ours  ;  and  the  witness  of  the 
blood  in  the  assurance  of  Christ's  true  and  abiding 
manhood,  which  we  verily  and  indeed  drink 
in  the  Cup  ;  and  these  three  witnesses  combine 
upon  the  one  point — that  Jesus  very  man  is 
the  very  Son  of  God  and  the  Christ  who  was 
to  come.  It  is  a  matter  of  human  witness. 
But  it  is  something  much  more  than  human 
witness.  God  Himself  has  borne  witness  to 
His  Son.  This  is  the  substance  of  His  witness, 
and  you  cannot  pass  it  by.  Believe  on  the 
Son  of  God  and  the  divine  witness  passes  into 
your  own  being.    Refuse  to  believe,  and  truly 


194  St.  John's  Epistles 

it  is  God  you  refuse  to  believe — it  is  God  wliom 
you  make  a  liar.  So  manifest  is  it  that  He  lias 
borne  His  witness  to  His  Christ.  And  the 
meaning  of  the  witness  is  this — that  God  has 
given  us  eternal  life,  fellowship  in  His  own  life, 
in  His  Son.  If  you  have  Him  you  have  the 
life  ;   and  without  Him  you  have  it  not. 


Whosoever  believeth  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  is  begotten 
of  God  :  and  whosoever  loveth  him  that  begat  loveth  him 
also  that  is  begotten  of  him.  Hereby  we  know  that  we 
love  the  children  of  God,  when  we  love  God,  and  do  his 
commandments.  For  this  is  the  love  of  God,  that  we 
keep  his  commandments :  and  his  commandments  are 
not  grievous.  For  whatsoever  is  begotten  of  God  over- 
cometh  the  world  :  and  this  is  the  victory  that  hath 
overcome  the  world,  even  our  faith.  And  who  is  he  that 
overcometh  the  world,  but  he  that  believeth  that  Jesus 
is  the  Son  of  God  ?  This  is  he  that  came  by  water  and 
blood,  even  Jesus  Christ ;  not  with  the  water  only,  but 
with  the  water  and  with  the  blood.  And  it  is  the  Spirit 
that  beareth  witness,  because  the  Spirit  is  the  truth.  For 
there  are  three  who  bear  witness,  the  Spirit,  and  the  water, 
and  the  blood  :  and  the  three  agree  in  one.  If  we  receive 
the  witness  of  men,  the  witness  of  God  is  greater  :  for  the 
witness  of  God  is  this,  that  he  hath  borne  witness  concerning 
his  Son.  He  that  believeth  on  the  Son  of  God  hath  the 
witness  in  him  :  he  that  believeth  not  God  hath  made  him 
a  liar ;  because  he  hath  not  believed  in  the  witness  that 
God  hath  borne  concerning  his  Son.  And  the  witness  is 
this,  that  God  gave  unto  us  eternal  life,  and  this  life  is  in 


The  divine  witness  to  Jesus  195 

his  Son.    He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  the  life ;    he  that 
hath  not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not  the  life. 

1.  It  is  a  comfort  to  many  people  to  note  that 
St.  John  interprets  the  love  of  God  so  absolutely 
as  having  no  other  meaning  than  the  diligent 
keeping  of  His  commandments,  and  doubtless 
also  the  "  love  of  the  brethren ''  as  the  willing 
and  whole-hearted  service  of  them.  -  Such 
devotion  to  the  service  of  God  and  man  is 
normally  followed  by  feelings  of  affection.  But 
it  is  not  a  matter  of  feeling  :  nor  is  feeling  the 
test. 

2.  His  commandments  are  not  "  grievous/* 
or,  rather,  *'  heavy.'"  There  would  seem  to  be 
an  obvious  reference  to  our  Lord's  own  words, 
"  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are 
heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.  Take 
my  yoke  upon  you,  and  learn  of  me  ;  for  I  am 
meek  and  lowly  in  heart :  and  ye  shall  find  rest 
unto  your  souls.  For  my  yoke  is  easy,  and  my 
burden  is  light''  (Matt.  xi.  28-30). 

3.  "  The  victory  which  overcame  the  world  " 
is  represented  as  "  our  faith."  But  the  context 
shows  that  the  faith  St.  John  is  thinking  of  is 
an  assurance  resting  upon  facts  of  experience — 
the  facts  of  Christ's  human  life,  which  justified 

14 


196  St.  Johns  Efistles 

or  compelled  tlie  belief  in  tlie  divine  sonsHp 
of  the  man.     The  victory  of  our  faith  depends 
upon   the  victory  of  Him  in  whom  we  have 
believed.    It  is  His  victory  appropriated  by  us. 
4.  The    dependence    of   the   Epistle   on   the 
Gospel  is  nowhere  more  evident  than  in  this 
passage.     The  meaning  of  "  the  water  "  is  to 
be  found  by  reference  to  John  the  Baptist's 
testimony    as    given    in    the    Gospel    (already 
quoted)  to  the  significance  of   the  baptism  of 
Jesus  (i.  32-4).    The  witness  of  the  blood  is  to 
be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  John  vi.  52-5, 
where   "  flesh "   expresses   our    Lord's    human 
nature  given  for  the  life  of  the  world;  and  when 
the    word    "  flesh "    causes    scandal    (ver.    52), 
"  blood  "  is  added  to  it  to  emphasize  the  reality 
of    sacrificed   manhood — the   "  blood   which   is 
the  life  "  thereof.    Again,  the  combination  of 
water  and  blood  in  the  drops  that  flowed  from 
our  Lord's  pierced  side  is  emphasized  without 
explanation  in  the  Gospel  (xix.  35),  and  here 
interpreted  of  the  union  in  Jesus  of  the  divine 
and  human  elements.    Again,  the  "  witness  of 
the  Spirit "  must  be  thought   of  in   the  light 
(1)  of  John  vii.  38-9,   "  This  spake  he  of  the 
Spirit,  which  they  that  believed   on  him  were 


The  divine  witness  to  Jesus  197 

to  receive  :  for  the  Spirit  was  not  yet ;  because 
Jesus  was  not  yet  glorified ''  ;  and  (2)  of  the  last 
discourses  about  the  Spirit  (xiv.  25-6,  xv.  26-7, 
xvi.  7-15),  where,  to  a  degree  not  commonly 
recognized,  the  Spirit  is  spoken  of  as  "  the 
Spirit  of  truth."  Again,  the  idea  of  a  divine 
witness  to  Christ  overshadowing  the  human 
witness,  which  is  to  be  appropriated  as  divine 
by  the  individual,  requires  interpreting  by  John 
iii.  31-4  and  v.  31-47,  and  other  passages. 

Et  is  fundamental  to  the  understanding  of  St. 
John's  attitude  towards  either  intellectual  re- 
jection of  Christ  or  perversion  of  the  teaching 
about  Him,  that  to  his  mind  the  Father  and 
the  Divine  Spirit  had  borne  such  manifest 
witness  to  Jesus  as  Christ  and  Son  of  God  that 
to  reject  the  witness  was  to  impugn  the  divine 
truthfulness — to  make  God  a  liar,  who  had 
wilfully  deceived  His  unhappy  creatures.  Only, 
St.  John  would  say,  the  external  testimony 
loyally  accepted  receives  such  inward  confirma- 
tion in  the  man's  own  heart  that  it  becomes 
his  own  testimony. 

Again,  the  idea  of  the  reception  of  life, 
divine  and  eternal,  as  the  result  of  believing  in 
Christ  and  as  the  object  of  His  coming,  is  a 


198  St.  John's  Epistles 

foundation  thought  of  the  Gospel  (see  above, 
p.  182).  And,  finally,  the  unique  and  exclusive 
claim  of  the  Christ,  "  He  that  hath  not  the 
Son  hath  not  life,''  refers  back  to  John  iii.  36. 

5.  The  threefold  witness. — We  may  feel  fairly 
confident  about  the  interpretation  of  the  Spirit 
and  the  water  and  the  blood  given  above.  It 
is  characteristic  of  St.  John's  mystical  method 
that  it  should  rest  on  outward  facts,  the  bap- 
tism of  Christ,  the  shedding  of  His  blood,  the 
drops  of  blood  and  water  which  trickled  from 
His  pierced  side— a  detail  remembered  and 
treasured  with  precision  ;  and  that  his  brooding 
soul  should  grow  to  see  the  inward  meaning  in 
the  outward  facts  with  an  absolute  certainty  of 
intuition;  and  that  he  should  pass  from  the 
record  of  past  facts,  the  baptism  and  cross  of 
Jesus  and  the  mission  of  the  Spirit,  to  the  present 
living  witnesses,  the  Spirit  still  possessing  the 
Church,  the  baptism  of  regeneration  into  the 
divine  life,  and  the  eucharist  in  which  we  eat 
the  flesh  of  Christ  and  drink  His  blood.  It  is 
not  possible  to  prove,  but  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  doubt,  these  last  references. 

6.  Finally,  a  word  must  be  said  about  the 
great  interpolation.    In  the  familiar  authorized 


The  divine  witness  to  Jesus  199 

version  the  text  of  the  above  section  (ver.  7) 
runs :    "  There  are  three  that  bear  record  [or 
"  witness "]  in  heaven,   the  Father,  the    Word, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost :    and  these  three  are  one. 
And  there  are  three  that  hear  witness  in  earth, 
the  Spirit,  and  the  water,  and  the  blood/'    The 
words  in  italics  are  an  undoubted  interpolation. 
They  do  not  exist  in  the  Greek  manuscripts, 
except  in  two  very  late  and  worthless  ones, 
apparently   translated  from   the  Latin.    They 
were  not  in  the  old  Latin  nor  in  Jerome's  trans- 
lation, nor  in  any  of  the  old  versions.      What 
happened  was  that  the  "  three  witnesses  agreeing 
in  one  "  suggested  the  idea  of  the  Trinity.     This 
suggestion,  probably  first  written  on  the  margin, 
found  its  way  into  the  text  at  the  hands  of  a 
pious   copyist,   probably   innocent   of   any   in- 
tention to  deceive.    Its  first  occurrence,  as  a 
text  of  St.  John,  is  in  the  writings  of  the  Spaniard 
Priscillian,^  who  was  put  to  death  in  a.d.  385. 
The  words  are  :   ''As  John  says,  There  are  three 
which  bear  witness  on  earth,  the  water,  the  flesh, 
and  the  blood ;    and  these  three  agree  in  one : 
and  there  are  three  which  bear  witness  in  heaven, 
the  Father,  the  Word,  and  the  Spirit,  and  these 
1  Tract,  i.  p,  6,  in  the  Corptts  Script,  Ecd.  Lat.  vol,  xviii. 


200  St.  Johns  Epistles 

three  are  one  in  Christ  Jesus."  These  or  the 
like  words  passed  from  copy  to  copy  of  the  Latin 
Bible,  and  came  to  be  accepted  as  part  of  the 
authoritative  text.  But  they  interrupt  the 
context  and  plainly  were  not  original. 

Nevertheless,  though  these  particular  words 
are  not  St.  John's,  there  can  be  no  question 
that  St.  John  believed  in  the  Trinity  in  Unity. 
The  statement  of  the  Quicunque  that  "The 
Father  is  G-od,  the  Son  is  God,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  God.  And  yet  they  are  not  three 
Gods,  but  one  God  "  can  be  quite  fairly  concluded 
from  his  Gospel  and  Epistles.  Later  writers 
have  loved  the  argument  that  love  involves 
fellowship  ;  and  that  a  God  who  eternally  is 
Love  must  be  a  God  whose  essential  nature  is 
a  fellowship,  and  I  do  not  think  St.  John  would 
have  demurred. 


§  10.     1  JOHN  V.  13-17 

FELLOWSHIP    IN    THE    ETERNAL    LIFE    AND 
PRAYER   FOR    OTHERS 

St.  John  defined  the  motive  of  his  choice  of 
incidents  for  his  Gospel  in  the  words  (xx.  31)  : 
*'  These  things  have  been  written  that  ye  may 
believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God ;  and  that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in 
his  name."  So  now  he  says  of  this  Epistle 
that  he  has  written  it  that  they  who  believe  in 
the  name  of  the  Son  of  God  may  know  that 
they  are  in  actual  enjoyment  of  eternal  life, 
the  life  which  no  earthly  blows  can  shake  or 
empair.  And  this  eternal  life  is  a  life  of  fellow- 
ship with  God,  and  carries  with  it  such  freedom 
of  speech  and  freedom  of  approach  towards 
God  that  whatever  we  ask  according  to  His 
will  He  hears  us.  Thus  we  know  that  His 
receiving  and  giving  effect  to  such  petitions  of 
ours  is  so  certain  that  we  can  rely  upon  what 
we  have  asked  for  as  already  in  our  possession. 

201 


202  St.  Johns  Epistles 

St.  John  then  applies  this  to  intercessory  prayer 

• — to    prayer    in    particular    to  which  we  are 

moved  by  the  sight  of  sins  committed  by  one 

of  our  brethren  in  Christ.    In  this  regard  St.  John 

draws  a  distinction.    As  under  the  Old  Covenant 

grave    and    deliberate    sins    had    death    for 

their  penalty,  while  lighter  sins  of  carelessness, 

ignorance,   or  sudden  passion    could  be  dealt 

with  by  the  sacrificial  system  of  the  community, 

so  is  it  now,  only  with  a  change  in  the  nature 

of  the  death  involved.     There  are  mortal  sins 

possible    among    Christians — that    is,    sins    so 

deliberate  and  defiant  as  to  cut  ofi  those  who 

commit  them  from  all  fellowship  in  the  eternal 

life  and  plunge  their  souls  into  death.     (This 

awful    passage   from   life   to    death   would   lie 

in   the   natare   of  the   sin ;    but,   where   open 

and  known,  the  sin  would  be  marked  outwardly 

and  visibly  by   excommunication — cutting   ojff 

the  guilty  person  from  the  fellowship  of  the 

Church.)    Now,  prayer  for  others  seeks  for  them 

a  divine  gift,  such  as,  according  to  God's  will, 

postulates  human  response.     The  dead  soul  gives 

no  such  response.    St.  John  then,  though  he 

does  not  actually  forbid  us  to  pray  for  souls 

thus  dead  in  sin,  does  say  that  when  he  speaks 


Fellowship  in  eternal  life  203 

of  intercession  for  sinners  he  is  only  thinking 
of  those  who  are  still  alive  spiritually,  i.e.  still 
responsive  to  the  movements  of  the  Spirit. 
When  such  people  sin — as  we  may  say,  when 
they  are  overtaken  by  sin  or  betrayed  into 
sin  against  the  real  bent  of  their  will— we  may 
be  confident  of  obtaining  life  for  them  from 
God ;  a  renewal  of  the  life  which  sin  has  more 
or  less  interrupted. 

These  things  have  I  written  unto  you,  that  ye  may 
know  that  ye  have  eternal  life,  even  unto  you  that  believe 
on  the  name  of  the  Son  of  God.  And  this  is  the  boldness 
which  we  have  toward  him,  that,  if  we  ask  anything  ac- 
cording to  his  will,  he  heareth  us  :  and  if  we  know  that 
he  heareth  us  whatsoever  we  ask,  we  know  that  we  have 
the  petitions  which  we  have  asked  of  him.  If  any  man  see 
his  brother  sinning  a  sin  not  unto  death,  he  shall  ask,  and 
God  will  give  him  life  for  them  that  sin  not  unto  death. 
There  is  a  sin  unto  death  :  not  concerning  this  do  I  say 
that  he  should  make  request.  All  unrighteousness  is  sin  : 
and  there  is  a  sin  not  unto  death. 

1.  ''Ye  have  eternal  life." — ^This  thought  is 
deep  in  the  mind  of  St.  John.  No  doubt,  as 
he  says  in  the  next  verse  that  we  already 
*'  have "  the  things  we  faithfully  ask  for  ac- 
cording to  God's  will,  though  we  have  them  not 
yet  in  experience  or  enjoyment,  so  about  eternal 


204  St.  John's  Efistles 

life — lie  would  recognize  that  there  is  a  sense 
in  which  eternal  life  is  still  future  and  is  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  the  resurrection  (see  John  v.  24-9). 
But  the  main  thought  on  which  he  insists  is 
that  it  consists  not  in  any  external  satisfaction 
or  rewards,  but  in  the  fellowship  of  the  soul 
with  God,  and  that  this  fellowship  in  the  life  of 
God  is  to  be  actually  realized  now.  "  Eternal 
life ''  in  St.  John  is  practically  the  equivalent 
of  "  the  kingdom  of  God,"'  which  is  a  phrase 
he  seldom  uses. 

2.  Prayer. — The  end  of  our  being  is  to  have 
fellowship  with  God.  "  The  life  of  man  is  the 
vision  of  God.'"  Doubtless  it  is  in  order  to 
train  us  for  such  fellowship  and  not  in  order  to 
inform  God  of  our  needs — for  *'  your  Father 
knoweth  what  things  ye  have  need  of  before 
ye  ask  Him " — that  God,  according  to  the 
testimony  of  our  Lord,  has  made  so  much  to 
depend  on  prayer.  Our  Lord  affirms  the  need 
of  prayer — "  Ask,  and  it  shall  be  given  unto 
you " — and  constantly  instructs  His  disciples 
that  it  must  be  urgent  and  importunate ;  just 
as  He  assumes  the  necessity  of  work  and  of  the 
thought  and  courage  which  is  required  for  good 
work  :  for  only  "  the  workman  is  worthy  of  his 


Prayer  for  others  205 

hire  " ;  only  *'  He  that  reapeth  receiveth  wages 
and  gathereth  fruit "  \  "The  night  cometh  when 
no  man  can  work."  There  are,  in  fact,  multi- 
tudes of  good  things  intended  for  us,  and  through 
us  for  others,  in  the  providence  of  God,  which 
will  never  be  ours  unless  we  work  for  them. 
Equally  certainly  there  is  an  abundant  store  of 
good  things  intended  for  us,  and  through  us  for 
others,  which  will  never  be  ours  unless  we 
faithfully  and  importunately  pray  for  them. 
So  our  Lord  taught  His  disciples  by  word  and 
example. 

But  He  also  taught  His  disciples  another 
lesson — that  the  eflficacy  of  prayer  depends  on 
its  being  in  accordance  with  what  we  know  to 
be  the  will  of  God — as  St.  John  here  says, 
"  according  to  his  will."  And  it  was  the  will 
of  God  which  our  Lord  came  to  make  men 
understand.  This  lesson  He  taught  in  various 
phrases :  "  If  ye  abide  in  me  and  my  word 
abide  in  you,  ye  shall  ask  what  ye  will  and  it 
shall  be  done  unto  you  "  ;  "  Whatsoever  ye  shall 
ask  the  Father  in  my  name  \i.e.  as  representing 
me  and  my  intention,  and  not  as  expressing 
your  own  selfish  desires]  it  shall  be  done  unto 
you.    Hitherto  have  ye  asked  nothing  in  my 


206  St.  John's  Efistles 

name/'  The  object  of  prayer,  we  learn,  is  not 
to  persuade  God  to  do  something  different  from 
what  He  had  intended,  but  to  free  His  hand 
to  do  His  will — that  will  which  can  only  be  done 
for  free  men  by  their  co-operation.  This  re- 
cognition of  an  immutable  will  of  God,  expressed 
in  the  laws  of  nature  and  in  the  whole  spiritual 
world,  is  not  meant  to  enslave  us  but  to  free  us. 
Nature,  we  have  learnt,  can  be  controlled,  but 
only  by  being  obeyed.  So  long  as  we  approach 
nature  in  the  light  of  our  own  whims  and  ideas, 
we  can  get  nothing  from  her.  She  remains 
stubborn  and  irresponsive.  When  we  reverently 
and  submissively  study  her  laws  and  correspond 
with  them,  we  can  use  them  for  our  purposes. 
So  it  is  in  the  spiritual  world.  This  lesson  is 
taught  most  plainly  in  the  petitions  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer  and  in  the  order  of  those  petitions. 
The  beginning  of  effective  prayer  is  to  abandon 
our  selfish  and  short-sighted  schemes  and  desires, 
and  concentrate  om*  whole  will  and  desire  upon 
the  kingdom  of  God  and  the  fulfilment  of  the 
Father's  will.  Thus  there  is  given  to  faith  so 
great  a  certainty  of  ultimate  fulfilment — even 
as  the  prayer  of  Christ  Himself  is  at  last  to  be 
heard  and  His  kingdom  to  come — that  it  can 


Prayer  for  others  207 

be  said  to  have  already  what  it  asks  for ;  but 
that  crowning  mercy  nevertheless  it  never  can 
receive  without  the  persistent  asking,  for  the 
law  of  God's  action  upon  us  is  to  demand  such 
correspondence. 

3.  Intercessory  prayer. — In  accordance  with 
what  has  just  been  said,  the  spirit  of  the  truest 
intercessory  prayer  is  defined  by  St.  Paul — 
speaking  of  the  intercession  of  the  Spirit  in  the 
body  of  Christ — as  "  in  accordance  with-  God 
on  behalf  of  saints  "  ^ — that  is,  on  behalf  of 
consecrated  persons  who  are  moving  in  corre- 
spondence with  the  Spirit.  Thus  if  we  take 
the  intercessory  prayers  of  the  New  Testament — 
our  Lord's  great  prayer  and  St.  Paul's  prayers 
for  his  converts — we  see  that  they  are  prayers 
for  the  perfecting  of  those  already  in  correspond- 
ence with  God.  The  principle  which  our  Lord 
enunciates — "  I  pray  not  for  the  world,  but  for 
them  whom  thou  hast  given  me "  ^ — appears 
generally  in  the  other  examples.  The  normal 
action  of  intercessory  prayer,  then,  is  within  the 
responsive  body.  From  it  there  flows  within 
the  body  so  rich  and  united  a  life  that  those 
outside  are  impressed  and  won.    So  here  St.  John 

1  Rom.  viii.  27.  2  joi^i^  xvii.  9. 


208  St.  John's  Epistles 

\  speaks  about  intercessory  prayer  as  prayer  for 
i  the  cleansing  and  recovery  from  incidental  sins 
'  of  those  who  are  still  responsive  to  God  and  living 
^  the  true  life.  As  for  those  who,  by  deliberate 
apostasy,  hand  themselves  back  to  the  world 
of  darkness  and  death — we  cannot  help  thinking 
of  those  leaders  in  error  whom  St.  John  describes 
as  antichrists — he  does  not  say  that  we  should 
pray  for  them.  He  does  not  forbid  it.  It  is, 
for  instance,  very  hard  to  suppose  that  St.  John 
did  not  pray  for  the  young  man  in  the  story 
Clement  tells  of  him,^  who  had  been  guilty  of 
the  most  flagrant  apostasy  from  Christ  and 
become  a  leader  in  outrageous  crimes,  whom 
the  bishop  to  whom  he  had  been  entrusted 
described  as  "  dead — dead  to  God.'*  It  is 
very  difficult,  I  say,  to  believe  that  St.  John  did 
not  pray  for  him  as  soon  as  ever  he  heard  of  his 
sad  case,  before  he  so  lovingly  and  bravely 
sought  and  won  him.  But  he  does  tell  us  that 
this  is  not  the  normal  action  of  intercessory 
prayer. 

I  am  quite  sure  we  need  to-day  to  learn  the 
lesson  afresh.  We  are  apt  to  pray  somewhat 
tepidly  and  perfunctorily  for  the  perfecting  of 

1  Clement  ap.  Euseb.  Eccl,  Hist,  iii.  23  ;  see  above,  p.  5. 


Prayer  for  others  209 


the  faithful.  We  take  their  customary  sins 
for  granted.  And  it  is  just  those  of  whom 
St.  John  says,  "  I  do  not  say  that  ye  should 
pray  for  them "  for  whom  we  pray  most 
urgently.  We  seem  to  regard  this  even  as  the 
normal  kind  of  intercessory  prayer — practically 
reversing  the  order  of  the  New  Testament.  I 
am  sure  this  subject  will  bear  much  thinking  of. 
The  normal  action  of  intercessory  prayer  is, 
according  to  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament, 
within  the  circle  of  those  who  are  living  in 
actual  response  to  the  movement  of  the  Divine 
Spirit. 

4.  Sins  unto  death  and  sins  not  unto  death. — 
This  distinction  is,  no  doubt,  based  upon  the 
Old  Testament.  I  will  explain  what  I  mean 
by  setting  before  my  readers  a  passage  from  the 
late  Dr.  A.  B.  Davidson,  Theology  of  the  Old 
Testament,^  partly  for  the  pleasure  of  quoting 
from  so  admirable  a  book. 

A  distinction  is  drawn  in  the  Old  Testament,  as  has 
been  seen,  between  sins  of  ignorance  and  inadvertence 
and  sins  done  with  a  high  hand  or  of  purpose.  .  .  .  The 
former  class  embraced  more  than  mere  involuntary  or 
inadvertent  sins.  The  class  comprehended  all  sins  done 
not  in  a  spirit  of  rebellion  against  the  law  and  ordinance 
1  (Clarke,  Edin.  1904),  pp.  315-17. 


210  St.  John's  Efistles 

of  Jeiiovali — sins  committed  through  human  imperfection, 
or  human  ignorance,  or  human  passion ;  sins  done  when 
the  mind  was  directed  to  some  end  connected  with  human 
weakness  or  frailty,  but  not  formally  opposed  to  the 
authority  of  the  lawgiver.  The  distinction  was  thus 
primarily  a  distinction  in  regard  to  the  state  of  mind  of  the 
transgressor.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  it  was  convenient 
to  specify  in  general  the  offences  which  belonged  to  the 
class  of  sins  done  with  a  high  hand,  and  upon  the  whole 
they  were  the  sins  forbidden  by  the  moral  law.^  No  doubt 
in  certain  circumstances  even  these  sins,  if  committed 
involuntarily,  were  treated  as  sins  of  error,  and  the  penalty 
due  to  them  was  averted  by  certain  extraordinary  arrange- 
ments ;  as,  for  example,  when  a  murder  was  committed 
by  misadventure,  the  manslayer  was  allowed  to  flee  to  a 
city  of  refuge.  Otherwise,  the  consequence  of  his  deed 
would  overtake  him  in  the  ordinary  penalty  attached  to 
such  an  offence,  which  was  death. 

Corresponding  to  this  distinction  among  offences  was 
another.  Only  sins  of  ignorance  were  capable  of  being 
atoned  for  by  sacrifice.  The  class  of  offences  said  to  have 
been  done  with  a  high  hand  were  capital,  and  followed  by 
exclusion  from  the  community.  The  sins  of  error  or 
ignorance  could  be  removed  by  sacrifice  and  offering.  In 
other  words,  the  Old  Testament  sacrificial  system  was  a 
system  of  atonement  only  for  the  so-called  sins  of  inad- 
vertency. .  .  .  [It]  belonged  to  the  worship  of  the  people 
of  God  concerned  as  truly  His  people,  believing  in  Him 
and  in  fellowship  with  Him.     And  it  was  a  means  of 

^  Not,  however,  all  sms  against  the  Ten  Commandments  by 
any  means,  e.g.  not  theft.  It  is  probable  that  the  words  "  that 
soul  shall  be  cut  off  from  Israel,"  which  recur  so  often  in  the 
priestly  code,  refer  to  excommunication  and  not  death.  C/, 
Ezra  X.  8,— C.  G. 


Prayer  for  others  211 

maintaining  tliis  fellowship,  of  equating  or  removing  the 
disturbances  which  human  frailty  occasioned  to  the 
communion."  On  the  other  hand,  "  high-handed "  sins 
"  threw  the  offender  outside  the  space  within  which  God 
was  continuously  gracious.  There  was  no  sacrifice  for 
such  sins.  The  offender  was  left  face  to  face  with  the 
anger  of  God.^ 

We  need  not  consider  how  far  this  theory  of 
the  Jewish  law  was  realized  in  fact.  At  any 
rate,  the  distinction  of  high-handed  sins  which 
are  ''  unto  death ''  (or  its  equivalent  excom- 
munication) and  sins  of  error  and  weakness  lies 
very  deep  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  St.  John 
reaffirms  it.  Doubtless  with  him  the  distinction 
is  viewed  mainly  as  it  is  in  the  heart  of  the 
sinner  and  in  the  moral  nature  of  things.  But 
we  see  already  in  St.  Paul's  Epistles  to  the 
Corinthians,  that,  as  under  the  Old  Covenant, 
so  under  the  New,  certain  kinds  of  sin  were  to  be 
regarded  as  "  high-handed ''  and  flagrant  acts 
of  apostasy,  and  visited  with  excommunication. 
The  Christian  Church  thereby,  like  the  Jewish, 
handed  over  the  offender  to  the  judgement  of 
God  among  **  those  without,'"  though  it  had 
the  advantage  of  the  older  Church  in  having 

^  The  reader  should  refer  to  Lev,  iv,  11 ;    Num.  xv, ;    and 
Heb.  V.  2,  ix,  7,  x.  26. 

15 


212  St.  John's  Efistles 

an  assurance  of  reconciliation  for  tlie  penitent. 
And,  doubtless,  St.  John  had  in  his  mind,  when 
he  reaffirmed  the  distinction  between  mortal 
sins  and  those  not  mortal,  the  primitive  system 
of  Church  discipline.  His  is  one  of  the  profoundly 
sacramental  minds  by  which  the  co-ordination 
of  the  inward  and  the  outward,  the  moral  and 
the  ecclesiastical,  can  never  be  forgotten,  and 
he  would  tolerate  no  disparagement  of  what  is 
external  as  such.  Nevertheless,  if  we  bring  to 
mind  the  history  of  the  terms  "  mortal '"  and 
"  venial "  in  connection  with  the  confessional, 
and  recall  certain  famous  Provincial  Letters — 
which  once  written  can  never  be  forgotten — I 
think  we  shall  feel  how  much  the  Church  needs 
a  St.  John  in  almost  every  age  to  keep  recalling 
its  outward  dealing  with  sins  as  they  appear 
to  the  inward  tribunal  of  spiritual  truth. 


§  11.     1  JOHN  V.  18-21 
THE   THREE    SOLEMN   FINAL   AFFIRMATIONS 

St.  John  ends  his  Epistle  with  three  great  final 
affirmations,  for  which  he  appeals  confidently 
to  the  consciousness  of  those  to  whom  he  writes 
and  associates  them  with  himself  ("  we  know  "). 
These  in  a  way  sum  up — not  his  message,  for  his 
message  is  largely  concerned  with  the  ethical 
contents  of  the  Christian  religion,  but  the 
grounds  of  his  message.  First,  and  in  spite  of 
what  he  has  just  said  about  the  experience  of 
sins  of  infirmity  and  also  of  mortal  sins  among 
Christians,  he  makes  a  solemn  affirmation  that 
sin  is  inconsistent  with  the  condition  of  divine 
regeneration ;  that  the  condition  of  each  re- 
generate person  is  a  condition  of  security  against 
sin — because  he  is  guarded  by  the  Only-begotten 
Son  and  the  wicked  one  cannot  touch  him. 
Secondly,  he  affirms  the  great  contrast  between 
the  Church  and  the  world — that  the  Church  is 
the  family  of  God,  and  that  the  whole  world — 

213 


214  St.  John's  Epistles 

society,  that  is,  as  it  organizes  itself  for  its  own 
ends  apart  from  God — lies  in  the  grasp  of  the 
evil  one.  Finally,  he  affirms  the  truthfulness 
and  finality  of  God's  disclosure  of  Himself  in 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ.  He  who  was  to  come 
in  Him  has  come.  There  is  no  more  to  be 
expected.  He  has  come  and  has  given  us  what 
mankind  of  themselves  never  could  arrive  at — 
an  intellectual  understanding  of  God  as  He 
genuinely  is :  and  more  than  understanding — a 
life  lived  in  Him  ;  that  is  to  say,  a  life  lived  in 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ,  which  is  the  same  thing  ; 
for  the  Father  and  the  Son  are  one,  and  dwelling 
in  the  Son  is  dwelling  in  the  Father.  This  is 
the  genuine  God  and  the  life  we  thus  live  is 
eternal  life.  There  are  many  false  gods,  the 
product  of  men's  imagination,  which  have  no 
genuine  reality ;  there  are  many  false  aims 
towards  which  are  directed  lives  that  are  worth- 
less and  transitory.  These  are  idols.  "  Little 
children,  guard  yourselves  from  the  idols." 

We  know  that  whosoever  is  begotten  of  God  sinneth 
not ;  but  lie  that  was  begotten  of  God  keepeth  him,  and 
the  evil  one  toucheth  him  not.  We  know  that  we  are  of 
God,  and  the  whole  world  lieth  in  the  evil  one.  And  we 
know  that  the  Son  of  God  is  come,  and  hath  given  us  an 


Three  solemn  affirmations  215 

understanding,  that  we  know  him  that  is  true,  and  we  are 
in  him  that  is  true,  even  in  his  Son  Jesus  Christ.  This  is 
the  true  God,  and  eternal  life.  My  little  children,  guard 
yourselves  from  idols. 

1.  He  that  was  begotten  of  God,  who  is  tlius 
distinguished  from  the  many  who  "  are  [or  more 
strictly,  "  who  have  been  "]  begotten/'  must  be 
"  the  only  begotten  Son,  which  is  in  the  bosom 
of  the  Father"  (John  i.  18).  As  He  Himself 
is  inaccessible  to  the  devil,  because  the  devil 
found  in  Him  nothing  that  he  can  lay  hold  of 
(John  xiv.  30) ,  so  also  He  renders  secure  against 
attack  those  whom  He  guards  within  the  shelter 
of  His  own  sonship. 

2.  The  Church  and  the  world. — What  a  tre- 
mendous contrast  St.  John  draws  between  the 
two  societies :  the  Church  in  its  supremacy 
over  the  evil  one  and  all  his  works,  and  the 
godless  society  which  lies  in  his  grasp  !  To  give 
the  contrast  any  point  it  must  have  been  felt 
to  be  true — true,  that  is,  on  the  whole,  in  spite 
of  the  unworthy  lapses  of  individual  members 
of  the  Church,  such  as  St.  John  implies,  and  in 
spite  of  respectable  and  noble  lives  among  those 
who  were  not  Christians.  In  spite  of  these 
things,  so  long  as  becoming  a  Christian  was  a 


216  St.  John's  Epistles 

perilous  venture  which  no  one  would  make  who 
was  not  in  earnest,  the  moral  level  of  the 
Church  was  very  high  and  the  contrast  between 
the  Church  and  the  world  continued  sharp. 
And  St.  John,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  loves  to 
represent  things  as  they  are  in  their  ultimate 
principles  and  ultimate  issues,  states  the  con- 
trast at  its  sharpest.  At  a  later  date  "  the 
conquest  of  the  world ''  (so  called)  took  place. 
It  cost  nothing  henceforth  to  be  a  Christian  : 
rather,  it  cost  much  to  be  in  name  anything 
else.  The  Church  then  entered  into  the  world  as 
still  a  leaven  possibly,  but  certainly  no  longer 
as  "the  salt,"  or  "the  light,"  or  "  the  city  set  on 
the  hill " — all  which  metaphors  involve  the 
sharp  contrast.  The  Church  entered  into  the 
world,  or,  much  more  truly,  it  suffered  the 
world  to  enter  into  the  Church  unchanged, 
unregenerated  in  character,  and  unashamed ; 
and  though  it  is  still  obvious  that  the  worldly 
world  lieth  in  the  grip  of  the  evil  one,  though 
our  industrial  organization  and  international  re- 
lations are  enough  to  convince  one  of  this,  yet 
there  is  no  contrasted  society  visible  and  co- 
herent, living  over  against  the  world,  militant  but 
attractive.  We  have  compromised  with  the  world. 


Three  solemn  affirmations  217 

We  have  not  been  miicli  in  love  witli  sanctity 
nor  anxious  to  tear  the  veils  oil  corruption. 
We  have  preferred  to  discern  a  soul  of  good  in 
things  evil,  and  with  good-humoured  satisfaction 
to  point  out  that  "  these  saints  are  not  much 
better  than  the  rest  of  us.'"  We  have  made  for 
ourselves  a  drab  world,  neither  very  black  (as 
we  think)  nor  very  white.  Now,  perhaps,  there 
is  an  awakening.  Perhaps,  at  least,  we  are 
more  conscious  than  formerly  that  "  the  world 
lieth  in  the  evil  one."  But  certainly  the  Church! 
has  still  a  long  way  to  travel  before  men  canji 
recognize  in  it  the  society  of  the  redeemed. 

3.  Understanding  to  Jcnoiv  the  real  God. — Here, 
again,  we  observe  St.  John's  insistence  upon  the 
importance  of-  right  thinking  about  God.  We 
are  to  love  the  Lord  our  God  with  all  our  under- 
standing, as  well  as  with  all  our  heart  and  soul 
and  strength.  It  is  really  shallowness,  or  what 
Butler  calls  shortness  of  thought,  which  causes 
so  many  to-day  to  talk  as  if  **  what  exactly 
people  believe  "  is  not  of  m.uch  importance  so 
long  as  their  hearts  are  right.  The  fact  is  that, 
however  much  inconsistency  there  may  be  be- 
tween intellectual  belief  and  practice  at  any 
particular    moment   or   in   any   particular   in- 


218  St.  John's  Epistles 

dividual,  in  the  long  run  how  men  behave — the 
character  of  their  whole  civilization,  indeed — 
depends  upon  what  exactly  they  really  believe 
about  God.  Thus  St.  John  has  a  very  clear 
idea  of  the  fellowship  of  mutual  love  which  is 
to  constitute  Christian  society  ;  but  he  is  clearly 
convinced  that  this  sort  of  society  can  come 
into  being  and  maintain  itself  only  if  men  believe 
that  the  very  being  of  God  Himself  is  love, 
which  must,  therefore,  be  the  law  of  the  world. 
And,  again,  he  is  convinced  that  this  assurance 
about  God's  nature  has  come  to  men,  and  can 
be  maintained,  in  no  other  way  than  through 
the  belief  that  the  hidden  Father  has  shown 
Himself,  His  real  mind  and  being,  in  the  historical 
person,  Jesus,  the  Christ  and  the  Son  of  God — 
so  truly  one  with  the  Father  that  in  knowing 
Him  we  know  the  Father,  and  in  being  joined 
to  Him  we  are  joined  to  the  Father.  This  is 
the  real  God,  he  says,  in  contrast  to  all  the  idols 
of  men's  ungoverned  imagination. 

Eight  religion  is  then,  according  to  St.  John, 
not  a  mere  matter  of  our  personal  feeling  or  what 
we  call  our  "  experience,"  but  depends  upon 
facts  outside  ourselves,  what  Jesus  was,  what 
He  taught  about  God,  how  He  suffered  and 


Three  solemn  affirmations  219 

rose  again.  And  those  facts  can  be  apprehended 
by  the  understanding  and  (within  limits)  can 
be  expressed  in  propositions  which,  if  they  are 
justified  by  the  facts,  can,  like  the  propositions 
which  St.  John  uses,  constitute  a  standard  of 
orthodoxy  or  right  thinking  in  religion.  It 
is  not  my  business  now  to  argue  what  the 
orthodox  creed  is  or  ought  to  be,  only  to  insist 
that  a  religion  such  as  Christianity  claims  to  be 
— a  religion  of  objective  facts — must  have  a 
standard  of  orthodoxy  appealing  to  the  under- 
standing. 

4.  Keep  yourselves  from  the  idols.— So  the  Old 
Testament  prophets  thundered  often  in  deaf 
ears.  And  they  meant  by  idolatry  the  worship 
of  idols  of  wood  and  stone.  But  it  was  even  then 
apparent  that  this  idolatry  is  so  sternly  pro- 
hibited because  it  is  a  worship  of  false  gods,  or, 
if  not  that,  because  it  misrepresents  the  true 
God.  During  the  Captivity  a  great  change 
came  over  Israel.  They  ceased,  in  the  old 
sense,  to  be  inclined  to  idolatry.  The  prophets 
after  the  Captivity  have  little  need  to  denounce 
it.  It  has  become  the  national  characteristic 
of  Israel  to  abhor  idols.  Nevertheless,  the  old 
prophets  would  have  been  disappointed  in  Israel, 


220  St.  John's  Epistles 

as  was  John  tlie  Baptist  and  as  was  our  Lord. 
Though  in  name  they  worshipped  the  true  God 
and  worshipped  Him  only  by  the  authorized 
rites,  yet  in  their  hearts  they  had  a  perilously 
false  idea  of  God.  And  the  spiritual  essence  of 
idolatry  is  either  to  enthrone  in  our  heart  some 
other  object  than  God  ("  covetousness  which  is 
idolatry  "),  or  to  entertain  wrong  ideas  of  Him. 
When  St.  John  says,  "  Keep  yourselves  from 
idols/*  he  is  not  surely  warning  the  Christians 
against  heathen  idolatry — of  such  a  danger  the 
Epistle  gives  us  no  hint — but  warning  them 
against  enthroning  in  their  minds  false  ideas 
of  God,  something  else  than  the  real  God : 
such  false  ideas  as  in  this  Epistle  he  has  ascribed 
to  the  spirit  of  antichrist.  And  if  we  look  around 
us  to-day  and  take  note  of  the  ideas  of  God  in 
man's  mind,  often  so  strangely  different  from 
those  which  our  Lord  would  teach  us,  we  shall 
confess  that  we  need  to  examine  ourselves  afresh 
under  the  heading  of  the  second  commandment ; 
that  we  need  to  make  sure  that  the  God  whom 
we  are  worshipping  is  not  an  idol  of  our  ima- 
gination or  of  other  men's  imagination,  but 
"  the  real  God.'' 


THE   SECOND   EPISTLE 

This  second  Epistle  is,  unlike  the  first  Epistle, 
properly  a  letter  from  a  person,  describing  himself 
by  a  familiar  title,  conveying  a  salutation,  like 
St.  Paul's  or  St.  Peter's  letters,  beginning,  again 
like  St.  Paul's,  with  an  expression  of  thankful- 
ness before  going  on  to  warning  and  admonition, 
and  ending  up  with  the  promise  of  a  visit  and 
a  message  from  the  circle  of  the  writer. 

It  is  written  to  an  "  elect  lady."  The  early 
Church  had  apparently  no  tradition  as  to  the 
circumstances  of  the  letter.  Clement  took  it 
to  be  written  to  a  certain  Babylonian  ^  lady, 
Elect  by  name.  But,  if  it  were  written  to  an 
individual,  it  would  appear  much  more  probable, 
on  various  grounds,  that  her  personal  name  is 
not  given.  However,  it  may,  I  think,  be  taken 
almost  for  certain  that  it  is,  as  Jerome  supposed, 
written  to  a  Church  personified,  as  in  1  Peter 
V.  13  the  Church  in  Rome  is  called  "  she  that 

^  Why  he  gives  her  this  place  of  residence  we  cannot  conjecture, 
221 


222  St.  John's  Efistles 

is  in  Babylon  elect  together  with  you."  Then,  - 
of  course,  her  "  children  "  are  the  members  of 
the  Church.  What  makes  this  theory  convincing 
is  that  the  "  thy  "  and  "  thee  ''  of  vers.  4  and  5 
pass  into  the  "ye''  and  "you"  of  vers.  6,  8, 
10,  12  ;  and  that  "the  children  of  thine  elect 
sister "  (ver.  13)  most  naturally  means  the 
members  of  the  writer's  own  Church. 

And  who  was  the  author  of  it  ?  The  internal 
evidence  seems  to  stamp  it  as  by  the  same  author 
as  the  first  Epistle — that  is,  St.  John  the  Apostle. 
Thus,  "  Love  in  truth  "  (ver.  1)  recalls  1  John 
iii.  1.  The  co-ordination  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son  (vers.  3  and  9),  the  co-ordination  of  love, 
obedience,  and  adherence  to  the  original  faith, 
the  faith  of  the  Incarnation  (vers.  6-7),  the 
phrase  "  the  commandment  which  we  had  from 
the  beginning,  that  we  love  one  another " 
(ver.  5),  and  indeed  the  whole  spirit  and  phrase- 
ology of  the  letter  recall  the  first  Epistle  un- 
mistakably.^ And  yet  it  can  be  no  imitator's 
work,  for  the  salutation  (ver.  3)  is  in  its  wording 
peculiar  ^  ;    and   the   characterization   of    "  the 

^  In  detail  for  ver.  5   cf.  1  John  ii.  7  ;   for   ver.  6  c/.  1  John 
V.  3  and  ii.  5  ;  and  for  ver.  7  cf.  1  John  ii.  18-26  and  iv.  2,  3. 
2  "  Shall  be  with  us  "  instead  of  "  be  with  you." 


The  second  Epistle  223 

antichrist "  as  denying  that  "  Jesus  Christ 
Cometh  [not  "  has  come ''  in  the  flesh,"  and 
the  denunciation  of  false  progress  (ver.  9) ,  and 
the  demand  that  no  sympathy  should  be  shown 
the  false  teacher  (ver.  10),  strike  new  notes 
which  are  indeed  thoroughly  Johannine,  but 
original  and  interesting,  and  not  such  as  could 
be  ascribed  to  an  imitator.  So  with  Irenseus 
and  Clement  of  Alexandria  we  accept  it  as 
truly  St.  John's.  There  were,  indeed,  some  in 
the  early  Church  who  doubted.  This  was 
perhaps  due,  at  first,  to  the  fact  that  this  short 
letter  to  a  Church,  containing  on  a  superficial 
view  nothing  of  importance  which  was  not  at 
greater  length  in  the  first  Epistle,  had  very 
little  diffusion.  Somewhat  later  the  fact  that 
the  author  describes  himself  as  "  the  elder 
[presbyter],"  probably  told  against  it,  presbyter 
being  the  name  given  to  the  second  order  of 
the  ministry,  or  else  to  those  venerable  men  of 
the  generation  after  the  apostles,  amongst  whom 
there  was  supposed  to  have  been  another  John 
called  '*  the  presbyter."  But  in  the  first  age 
ecclesiastical  designations  were  not  fixed.  Peter 
calls  himself  a  presbyter  (1  Peter  v.  1),  and  early 
bishops  are  often  so  called.    St.  John,  in  fact 


224  St.  Johns  Epistles 

(except  in  the  Apocalypse,  if  that  is  by  him), 
never  uses  the  term  "  apostle ''  at  all.  And  he 
may  well  have  loved  to  call  himself  "  the  elder," 
partly  with  reference  to  age  and  partly  with 
reference  to  office  ;  and  it  may  have  become 
a  familiar  title  of  reverence  and  affection  in 
Asia.  On  the  whole,  we  may  accept  St.  John's 
authorship  without  doubt.  Presumably,  the 
Church  to  which  St.  John  wrote  was  one  of  the 
Asiatic  Churches  amongst  which  he  ministered, 
but  we  have  no  right  to  fix  on  any  one  in 
particular. 

The  elder  unto  the  elect  lady  and  her  children,  whom  I 
love  in  truth  ;  and  not  I  only,  but  also  all  they  that  know 
the  truth  ;  for  the  truth's  sake  which  abideth  in  us,  and 
it  shall  be  with  us  for  ever  :  Grace,  mercy,  peace  shall  be 
with  us,  from  God  the  Father,  and  from  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Son  of  the  Father,  in  truth  and  love. 

I  rejoice  greatly  that  I  have  found  certain  of  thy  children 
walking  in  truth,  even  as  we  received  commandment  from 
the  Father.  And  now  I  beseech  thee,  lady,  not  as  though 
I  wrote  to  thee  a  new  commandment,  but  that  which  we 
had  from  the  beginning,  that  we  love  one  another.  And 
this  is  love,  that  we  should  walk  after  his  commandments. 
This  is  the  commandment,  even  as  ye  heard  from  the 
beginning,  that  ye  should  walk  in  it.  For  many  deceivers 
are  gone  forth  into  the  world,  even  they  that  confess  not 
that  Jesus  Christ  cometh  in  the  flesh.  This  is  the  deceiver 
and  the  antichrist.  Look  to  yourselves,  that  ye  lose  not 
the  things  which  we  have  wrought,  but  that  ye  receive  a 


The  second  Epistle  225 

full  reward.  Whosoever  goetli  onward  and  abideth  not 
in  the  teaching  of  Christ,  hath  not  God  :  he  that  abideth 
in  the  teaching,  the  same  hath  both  the  Father  and  the 
Son.  If  any  one  cometh  unto  you,  and  bringeth  not  this 
teaching,  receive  him  not  into  your  house,  and  give  him 
no  greeting :  for  he  that  giveth  him  greeting  partaketh 
in  his  evil  works. 

Having  many  things  to  write  unto  you,  I  would  not 
write  them  with  paper  and  ink  :  but  I  hope  to  come  unto 
you,  and  to  speak  face  to  face,  that  your  joy  may  be 
fulfilled.     The  children  of  thine  elect  sister  salute  thee. 

Ver.  2.  For  the  truth's  saJce. — St.  Jolin  writes 
"  on  account  of/'  i.e.  to  maintain  the  true  faith 
sorely  thi-eatened,  as  we  learn  in  the  first  Epistle ; 
but,  in  spite  of  all  attacks,  he  is  confident  that 
it  will  endure  "  with  us,"  even  as  it  abides  "  in 
us  "  by  the  Spirit  of  truth. 

Ver.  3.  Grace,  mercy,  peace,  is  also  St.  Paul's 
salutation  in  his  Epistles  to  Timothy.  "  Grace,'' 
here  only  used  in  these  Epistles,  describes  the 
favourable  action  of  God  towards  us  as  unmerited 
and  absolute,  mercy  describes  its  character, 
and  peace  its  consequence  in  us.  St.  John 
does  not  imprecate  these  blessings  on  those  to 
whom  he  writes,  like  St.  Paul,  but  simply  assures 
them  of  their  continuance  with  us.  "  Jesus 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Father,"  is,  as  far  as  words 
go,  a  title  unique  in  the  New  Testament. 


226  St.  John's  Efistles 

Ver.  4.  Certain  of  thy  children  ivalJcing  in 
truth. — Doubtless  some  also  liad  gone  after 
"  the  deceivers/"  But  it  is  tactful,  where  warn- 
ing has  to  be  given,  to  begin  with  what  merits 
thankfulness. 

Ver.  7.  Jesus  Christ  cometli  in  the  flesh. — This 
is  one  of  the  most  significant  phrases  in  the 
Epistle.  It  can  only  refer  to  the  future,  final, 
coming  of  Christ.  The  antichrists  then  are 
characterized  not  only  by  the  denial  that  Christ 
"  has  come  in  the  flesh,''  but  also  by  the  denial 
that  He  still  exists  in  the  flesh  and  is  still  to 
come  from  heaven,  "'  as  ye  beheld  him  going 
into  heaven."'  ^  This  is  very  important.  Doubt- 
less, there  is  a  sense  in  which  Christ  is  not  now 
in  "  the  flesh  "  ;  as  St.  Paul  says,  "  flesh  and 
blood  cannot  inherit  the  kingdom  of  God,"  and 
*'  the  last  Adam  became  a  life-giving  spirit."  * 
Flesh  in  this  sense,  as  coupled  with  blood, 
describes  our  present  mortal  body,  which  must 
either  be  changed  or  dissolved  for  the  spiritual 
body  to  be  "  given."  But  "  all  flesh  is  not  the 
same  flesh,"  and  the  body  of  the  resurrection 
may  also  be  described  as  flesh.  So  in  our 
Lord's   discourse   about   eating   His   flesh   and 

1  Acts  i.  11.  2  1  Cor.  XV.  45-6. 


The  second  Epistle  227 


drinking  His  blood,  He  first  emphasizes  the 
reality  of  the  gift,  and  then  directs  the  thoughts 
of  His  hearers  to  a  state  of  glory  not  yet  realized, 
when  He  shall  have  ascended  up  where  He  was 
before,  and  the  things  He  has  been  talking  about. 
His  flesh  and  blood,  will  be  spirit  and  life  :  for 
"  it  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth  ;  the  flesh  pro- 
fiteth  nothing.''  ^  And  the  indications  given  us 
of  our  Lord's  body  after  He  was  risen  from  the 
dead  indicate  that  He  was  no  longer  "  in  the 
days  of  His  flesh,"  ^  or  subject  to  its  conditions 
or  limitations.  His  body  was  simply  the  perfect 
expression  of  His  will  and  purpose.  But  it  was 
the  same  body  which  He  had  taken  of  Mary 
and  in  which  He  lived  and  suffered.  It  bore, 
on  occasion,  at  least,  the  marks  of  His  crucifixion. 
As  being  the  same  body,  Christ  could  still  be 
described  as  "  in  the  flesh  "  :  and  His  heavenly 
state — that  is,  the  state  in  which  He  will  return 
— is  here,  in  fact,  so  described  by  St.  John,  and 
he  insists  on  the  description  because  it  em- 
phasizes the  fact  that  the  glorified  body  of  our 
Redeemer — though  He  is  now  "  quickening 
spirit"  and  the  flesh  and  blood  with  which 
He  feeds  His  people  are  spiritual — "  spirit  and 

1  John  vi.  63.  2  Heb.  v.  7. 

16 


228  St.  John's  Epistles 

life '' — is  still  the  same  body.  He  is  still 
"  to  come  in  tlie  flesli/'  and  to  deny  this  is 
the  mark  of  antichrist.  This  is  very  im- 
portant.^ 

Indeed  to-day  we  need  St.  John's  warning. 
We  are  in  the  gravest  danger  of  "  losing  the 
things  which  we  " — that  is,  he  and  the  other 
apostolic  founders — "have  wrought,"  and 
converting  the  historical  Christianity  of 
the  creeds  into  an  idealism  like  that  of  the 
Gnostics. 


^  In  the  same  way,  doubtless,  St.  John  would  justify  belief 
in  "  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh "  in  our  case.  Not  because 
our  resurrection  bodies  are  to  be  of  "  flesh  and  blood,"  i.e.  in  the 
condition  of  our  mortal  bodies,  or  because  there  is  to  be,  at  the 
resurrection,  a  re-collection  of  the  present  changing  physical 
atoms  of  our  bodies,  but  because  the  spiritual  body  is  to  be  the 
same  body  in  some  sense,  bearing  the  marks  of  its  old  experiences, 
the  real  record  of  what  we  have  done  and  suffered,  though  its 
material  elements  are  changed.  There  must  remain  a  difference, 
as  St.  Paul  makes  plain,  between  the  process  by  which,  in  the 
case  of  us  who  die  in  the  course  of  nature,  the  spiritual  body  is 
to  be  given  to  us  in  place  of  our  mortal  body  which  decays,  and> 
on  the  other  hand,  the  process  by  which  Christ's  body  was 
transformed  into  the  resurrection  body,  and  also  the  process  by 
which  "  in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,"  the  bodies 
of  those  who  at  the  last  are  not  to  die  at  all  are,  in  St.  Paul's 
expectation,  to  be  "  changed."  Still,  in  a  real  sense,  all  we 
(whether  we  die  or  are  "  changed  ")  shall  be,  like  Christ,  in 
St.  John's  sense,  in  the  flesh. 


The  second  Epistle  229 

Ver.  9.  These  Gnostic  antichrists  professed 
to  be  the  "  progressives '"  of  their  day.  They 
were,  in  fact,  the  intellectuals,  and,  as  so  being, 
they  made,  as  TertuUian  tells  us,  a  vast  number 
of  converts  among  the  ablest  people.  But 
their  progress  was  a  progress  beyond  "  the 
teaching  of  Christ,"  beyond  "  the  teaching '' 
otherwise  described  as  what  "  ye  heard  from 
the  beginning,''  the  original  Gospel  both  in  its 
facts  and  ideas.  Therefore,  St.  John  will  have 
none  of  this  false  progress.  And,  in  fact,  history 
has  justified  him.  In  spite  of  the  force  of 
Gnostic  idealism  it  was  the  historical  faith  and 
the  concrete  Church  which  survived.  And  we 
shall  see,  or  our  children  will  see,  the  same 
result  again.  Many  current  idealisms  and 
religions  will  pass  away,  but  the  Catholic  faith 
and  Church  will  prove  their  inherent  toughness 
and  survival  power. 

Ver.  10.  And  just  as  St.  Paul  denounces, 
with  his  tremendous  anathema,  those  who 
preach  **  any  other  gospel,''  ^  so  St.  John  would 
have  his  disciples  show  the  wandering  teachers 
of  the  Gnostic  heresy  no  manner  of  sympathy. 
To  receive  a  teacher  of  falsehood,  when  he  is 
1  Gal.  i.  9. 


230  St.  John's  Epistles 

out  for  propaganda  purposes,  to  the  hospitality 
of  one's  home  and  to  make  him  welcome,  is 
to  make  oneself  responsible  for  what  he  is 
doing. 

Certainly  this  brief  Epistle  has  much  to  teach 
us. 


THE    THIRD   EPISTLE 

This  is  certainly  an  Epistle  to  an  individual, 
Gains  (whicli  was  a  very  common  name),  and 
is  also  plainly  from  the  same  hand  as  the  second 
Epistle.  It  describes  an  interesting  situation, 
but  leaves  so  much  undisclosed  that  we  cannot 
feel  any  great  certainty  about  it,  except  that 
important  people  in  the  Church  could  even  in 
the  age  and  neighbourhood  of  the  apostle  St. 
John  behave  very  badly  to  him  and  resist  his 
authority.  Clement  tells  us,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered, that  St.  John's  later  activity  at  Ephesus 
included  the  appointment  of  bishops  in  neigh- 
bouring Churches.^  These  bishops  were,  like 
the  later  bishops,  and  unlike  the  earlier  pres- 
byter-bishops, single  rulers.  They  succeeded 
to  the  office  of  apostolic  delegates,  like  Timothy 
and  Titus,  only  more  strictly  localized.  Such 
are  the  bishops  of  the  letters  of  Ignatius,  written 
some  fifteen  years  later.    Diotrephes  was  pro- 

^  See  above,  p.  6. 
231 


232  St.  John's  Efistles 


bably  one  of  them.    And  being  an  ambitious 
man,    lie    resented   St.    Jolm's    authority    and 
determined   to    show   his   independence   of   it. 
We  can  imagine  his  arguing  that  his  episcopal 
office  was  also  apostolic.     We  should  note  that 
he  is  not,  as  far  as  appears,  in  conflict  with  his 
presbyters  as  if  he  were  usurping  authority  over 
them,  but  only  in  conflict  with  St.  John.     His 
independence  of  him  he  chose  to  show  by  refusing 
to  entertain  those  who  came  from  him.    In  the 
first  days  movements  were  propagated  not  by 
newspapers,    but    by    circulating    missionaries. 
So  the  Gnostics  were  propagating  their  views  : 
they  "  went  out  into  the  world '"  (ver.  7),  and 
St.  John  has  just  bidden  a  Church  not  to  enter- 
tain these  messengers  of  falsehood.     We  might 
suppose  that  St.  John's  envoys  were  sent  out 
to   counteract  this  false  teaching.    They   are, 
in  fact,  described  as  going  forth  "  because  of 
the  Name,''  relying  exclusively  on  the  support 
of  the  faithful,  and  to  give  them  hospitality  is 
to  "  co-operate  with  the  truth  "  (ver.  8).    And 
Diotrephes,  it  appears,   had  dealt  with  them 
exactly  as  St.  John  had  exhorted  the  Church 
addressed  in  his  second  Epistle  to  deal  with  the 
Gnostic  missionaries.    He  had  refused  to  enter- 


The  third  Efistle  233 

tain  them  and  had  excommunicated  those  who, 
like  Gains,  acted  otherwise.  But  St.  John  does 
not  hint  that  Diotrephes  was  disposed  to  heresy. 
If  that  had  been  so,  his  denunciation  would  have 
taken  a  diHterent  form.  He  was  simply  an 
ambitious  man  who  wanted  to  show  his  inde- 
pendence of  "  the  presbyter,"  and  St.  John 
assumes  that  in  refusing  to  give  hospitality  to 
his  messengers  he  is  simply  affronting  him  and 
not  basing  his  action  on  difference  of  doctrine. 
St.  John  is  going  to  visit  the  Church,  and  is 
confident  that  when  he  is  there  he  will  be  able 
to  show  up  Diotrephes's  evil  purpose  in  its  true 
light.  Meanwhile  he  had  written  to  the  Church 
— perhaps  it  is  the  second  Epistle  that  he  is 
referring  to — but  fears  Diotrephes  may  suppress 
his  letter,  and  takes  the  opportunity  to  send 
this  private  letter  by  Demetrius,  one  of  his 
envoys,  to  Gains,  a  member  of  the  Church  of 
which  Diotrephes  was  presumably  the  bishop, 
who  had  been  actively  opposing  him  and  had 
suffered  for  it.  Whether  Gains  was  layman 
or  presbyter,  we  cannot  say.  Anyway,  this 
little  letter  gives  us  a  picture  of  factions  in  an 
apostolic  Church  and  of  a  movement  of  rebellion 
even  against  the  aged  apostle.    This  is,  of  course, 


234  St.  John's  Epistles 

no  new  tMng.  St.  Paul  had  endured  the  like. 
Also  it  gives  us  an  interesting  picture  of  the 
circulation  of  bands  of  missionaries,  and  their 
total  dependence  upon  finding  support  in  the 
different  Churches  they  visited,  and  of  the  way 
in  which  questions  of  orthodoxy  and  personal 
rivalries  between  leaders  in  different  Churches 
would  have  interfered  with  their  welcome  and 
left  them  destitute. 

Perhaps  nothing  more  is  necessary  by  way 
of  explaining — conjecturally,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted — this  third  Epistle. 

3  John 

The  elder  unto  Gaius  the  beloved,  whom  I  love  in  truth. 

Beloved,  I  pray  that  in  all  things  thou  mayest  prosper 
and  be  in  health,  even  as  thy  soul  prospereth.  For  I 
rejoiced  greatly,  when  brethren  came  and  bare  witness 
unto  thy  truth,  even  as  thou  walkest  in  truth.  Greater 
joy  have  I  none  than  this,  to  hear  of  my  children  walking 
in  the  truth. 

Beloved,  thou  doest  a  faithful  work  in  whatsoever  thou 
doest  toward  them  that  are  brethren  and  strangers  withal  ; 
who  bare  witness  to  thy  love  before  the  church :  whom 
thou  wilt  do  well  to  set  forward  on  their  journey  worthily 
of  God  :  because  that  for  the  sake  of  the  Name  they  went 
forth,  taking  nothing  of  the  Gentiles.  We  therefore  ought 
to  welcome  such,  that  we  may  be  fellow-workers  with  the 
truth. 

I  wrote  somewhat  unto  the  church :    but  Diotrephes 


The  third  Efistle  235 

who  loveth  to  have  the  pre-eminence  among  them,  receiveth 
us  not.  Therefore,  if  I  come,  I  will  bring  to  remembrance 
his  works  which  he  doeth,  prating  against  us  with  wicked 
words  :  and  not  content  therewith,  neither  doth  he  himself 
receive  the  brethren,  and  them  that  would  he  forbiddeth, 
and  casteth  them  out  of  the  church.  Beloved,  imitate 
not  that  which  is  evil,  but  that  which  is  good.  He  that 
doeth  good  is  of  God  :  he  that  doeth  evil  hath  not  seen 
God.  Demetrius  hath  the  witness  of  all  men,  and  of  the 
truth  itself :  yea,  we  also  bear  witness  ;  and  thou  knowest 
that  our  witness  is  true. 

I  had  many  things  to  write  unto  thee,  but  I  am  unwilling 
to  write  them  to  thee  with  ink  and  pen  :  but  I  hope  shortly 
to  see  thee,  and  we  shall  speak  face  to  face.  Peace  he 
unto  thee.  The  friends  salute  thee.  Salute  the  friends 
by  name. 


APPENDED    NOTE    {see  p.  38) 

Dr.  Drummond  {Character  and  Authorship  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  pp.  32  fE.)  suggests  that  when  Clement,  on  the 
authority  of  "  the  presbyters  from  the  beginning,"  i.e. 
the  immediate  disciples  of  the  apostles,  calls  the  Fourth 
Gospel  a  "  spiritual  gospel "  by  contrast  to  the  other 
three,  he  meant  that  John  "  set  forth  his  higher  and  more 
secret  doctrine  in  the  form  of  allegory."  Dr.  Inge  {Cam- 
bridge Biblical  Essays,  ix.  p.  260-1)  makes  the  same  sugges- 
tion. But,  as  has  been  already  observed  (p.  38),  Origen, 
who  explains  at  length  the  view  of  the  great  Alexandrians, 
makes  in  two  places,  in  one  of  which  we  have  the  original 
Greek,  an  express  reservation  which  excludes  the  idea 
that  the  facts  related  of  our  Lord,  and,  in  particular.  His 
miracles,  including  the  raising  of  Lazarus,  are  intended 
as  merely  allegorical.  Origen,  it  is  true,  makes  alarming 
general  statements  about  the  "  myriad  "  things,  even  in 
the  Gospels  which  are  not  literally  true.  But  he  had  not 
our  mind  and  was  not  contemplating  our  problem.  He 
gives  a  great  number  of  examples  of  what  he  means. 
They  are  injunctions,  as  "  to  pluck  out  our  right  eye  and 
cut  off  our  right  hand,"  which  must  be  interpreted  alle- 
gorically,  or  statements  of  Christ's  manhood  which,  in  order 
to  be  true,  would  need  to  be  balanced  by  statements  of  His 
godhead,  or  chronological  inexactitudes,  etc.  As  far  as  I 
have  observed,  there  is  only  one  recorded  incident  in  our 
Lord's  life  for  which  he  suggests  a  purely  allegorical  inter- 
pretation, and  that  is  (not  in  St.  John's  Gospel)  the  incident 

236 


Appended  Note  237 


in  the  Temptation  where  the  devil  is  recorded  to  have 
taken  Jesus  up  into  "  an  exceeding  high  mountain  and 
showed  Him  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  and  the  glory 
of  them"  ;  it  being,  as  he  says,  physically  impossible  from 
any  high  mountain  to  see  the  kingdoms  of  the  Persians 
and  Indians  and  Scythians  and  Parthians  and  discern  their 
glory.  I  suppose  we  should  most  of  us  agree  so  far  with 
Origen  as  to  hold  that  this  account  of  the  temptation  must 
have  been  originally  given  by  our  Lord  to  His  disciples  as 
a  vivid  presentation  of  what  passed  in  His  mind,  though 
it  was  perhaps  misunderstood  by  the  evangelists  as  the 
record  of  a  physical  experience.  But,  on  the  whole,  we 
have  Origen' s  assurance  that  the  things  recorded  of  Christ, 
including  His  miracles,  and  in  particular  those  of  St.  John, 
must  be  taken  literally. 

The  passages  to  be  studied  are  especially  the  passage 
from  the  De  Principis,  iv.,  given  in  Philocalia,  cap.  1  ; 
the  commentary  on  St.  John,  tom.  x.,  the  beginning ;  and 
the  passage  from  the  commentary  on  the  Galatians,  last 
fragment,  from  Kufinus's  translation  of  Pamphilus's 
Apology  for  Origen. 

On  the  degree  of  trustworthiness  to  be  ascribed  to 
Rufinus  as  a  translator  of  Origen  cf.  Robinson's  preface 
to  the  Philocalia,  pp.  xxxi  ff. 


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